Gifts
by Marla Fair
Summary: Gifts - Nightwing is dead. Can a grief stricken Batman survive, and what will Starfire risk to bring her love and husband back? A sequel to 'Another Chance...'
1. Chapter 1

GIFTS Prologue

 _Dead._

 _He's dead._

 _What am I going to do?_

 _His wife and his grown child stare at me with those empty green eyes._

 _They blame me._

 _They always do._

 _I listen to the preacher. Words. Empty words._

 _I have never understood his interest or belief in this._

" _I am the resurrection and the life. Where, Death, is your victory? Where is your power to hurt?"_

 _It is here. In the eyes of a young woman, raven-haired, her golden skin gone white, standing next to the one she has chosen to love; his hand trembling as he watches her tears; powerless, impotent. He can do nothing._

 _Here. In the eyes of her mother, a woman who cheated death only to have it find someone she loved._

 _Here. In the small soft sounds of his infant son, too young to understand or to remember._

 _And here, in this breast. In this heart of mine which has ceased beating. For the space of a single moment I am suspended in time._

 _There is no God._

 _There is only Death and he is laughing once again._

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ONE

"Bruce?"

"Bruce…. What are you thinking?"

Bruce Wayne glanced up from the hard copy of the Gotham Times. They laughed at him but he stubbornly refused to accept obtaining all of his information from a monitor. There was something about holding the paper in your hand. Feeling it…

"Earth to Bruce. Are you in there?" Dick Grayson grinned at his mentor, noting as he did how the lines of care and age which had altered his handsome face had managed to soften him, as though the passing years were finally something he could welcome and not yet another obstacle to overcome. As he switched his infant son from one arm to the other, a whispered word of thanks crossed his lips. Then the baby cooed and gurgled and his mind flew from his mentor to the little blessing in his hands.

Bruce Wayne held still, watching the pair for a moment and then said softly, "I might ask you the same thing. How _is_ John?"

"Beautiful," his former ward breathed. "Absolutely beautiful."

The older man laid the paper down and crossed to where he could look directly at the child. So serene and beautiful. Nestled in his father's arms, safe and secure. He was not asleep, but murmured quietly, his large cerulean eyes opening and closing lazily.

"So like his mother." Bruce traced the golden skin with a long thin finger, ending with its tip in the child's madder-red hair. As the baby responded, gazing vaguely in his direction, he chided himself again for finding the absence of pupils unnerving.

"Another gift, yes. Like Kory's return." Dick took a breath and looked up to meet the other man's pale blue eyes, "I haven't told you lately how grateful I am for what you did. If you hadn't— "

Bruce's hand came up to silence him. He remembered still that day nearly twelve years before when Koriand'r lay dying, the day when he had decided Death had had enough victories and had made the decision that he would not have one more. Without consulting her husband, he had filled the Tamaranean's ravaged body with a volatile mixture of chemicals based on one of Victor Frieze's experimental formulas. He remembered as well attending her doleful funeral, which for him had been a travesty. Then, years of research, moments of hope and, ultimately, failure after failure...until finally the hand of yet another megalomaniac—new to both his ward and him—had brought his indiscretion to light and granted her another chance at life.

 _Resurrection._

"I did what I had to do. You know that." Bruce hesitated a moment and then disentangling his hand from the baby's hair, lifted it to lay it lightly on his son's black head. There were no streaks of gray in it now, no sign of age due to the restorative powers of the Lazarus Pit. The risk they had taken—he, Ibn, Nightstar and Koriand'r—to save the life of this one who was more precious to them than anything had paid off. Bruce sighed. "You are my son. My firstborn in every way that counts. I love you and—through you—all that is yours."

Dick felt his eyes grow moist. His free hand found his former guardian's and lingered there a moment. "Bruce, I have never seen you so content."

The aging man controlled the shudder his son's words sent snaking down his spine. There were still times—even in the midst of the peace and security the end of the Metahuman conflict had engendered, in the heart of the joy that came from settling differences and taking off the masks—times when he still experienced the sensation of someone walking over his grave. Or rather, the graves of those he had loved and lost; the heroes who had walked and worked by his side who had gone before. Green Arrow. Black Canary. All the others who had died on that field in Kansas. Jason. …his parents. And this one—who stood whole and healthy before him now—whose _first_ death he had been unable to prevent. Only an odd quirk of fate that bound them both to the deceased madman, Ra's Al Ghul, had preserved his life, allowing him to rise like a phoenix from the liquid fires of the Pit.

The man who remained the Batman took a deep breath and forsook the shadows, consciously choosing to walk in the sun. Still, words escaped him. He simply nodded and then changed the subject. "Come on, the others are waiting."

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Clark Kent stood next to his beautiful wife, aware with each passing second of the precious nature of the gift beside him; of her beauty and wisdom, and of the fact that she was his. He still remembered Lois—would never forget her—but time could heal wounds no matter how deeply felt, and in fact it had. She was talking with Dick's wife on the stone steps of the newly reconstructed Wayne Manor, once more a home, and was busy trying to disentangle young Bruce's fingers from his 'Aunt Kory's' incredibly long and voluminous madder hair. The Tamaranean was laughing.

It still did his heart good to see her here. She had to be a constant reminder to his old friend that life could win. Death did not always have to be the victor. Not until it was time. That was something his friend needed to acknowledge. _Should_ have acknowledged years before. There had been so many long wasted dark years for him. Now…now there was hope and renewal. Little John Bruce Grayson was the promise and seal of that. They didn't know yet whether he had inherited his mother's powers or would simply be a good man like his father.

It didn't matter.

He had the best of this world—old and new—to rear him and more than enough love for any child.

"Clark, are you leaving?"

Bruce and Dick emerged from the darkly wood-paneled interior of the Manor with the young man in the lead. His infant son was balanced on his shoulder like an acrobat while his father gently patted the small golden back. John was cooing and laughing with delight. The man who had been the Batman, who no longer chose to wear that mantle for reasons of his own, trailed a few steps behind him and though the sun shone mightily in a clear blue sky, his old friend sensed a dark cloud hanging over him. This was something the Kryptonian had not seen in quite a while and it troubled him.

Nodding to Diana, he moved past Dick to confront him "Bruce…."

The silvered head came up. Caught unawares it took him a millisecond to mask the pain in his light blue eyes. Half a millisecond too long to fool his friend. "Eh? Oh Clark, I was thinking."

Clark frowned and looked over his glasses at him, his grey and white eyebrows arched to touch the s-shaped lock on his forehead. "About nothing good it seems. Are you all right?"

The older man glanced at his son where he stood at ease next to the alien princess, raising his own son high over his head and making him seem to fly.

"What? Oh, yes…." Bruce's mouth turned up in a wry smile. "Spooking myself, that's all."

"There's a new twist on an old theme." Clark placed his hand on his friend's shoulder. "What is this? You've been so happy. At peace. Is there trouble?"

There was a pause and then he answered, "Nothing I have not created for myself."

"Would you like to talk?"

Bruce glanced again at the man before him, one it seemed he had known forever. One he called friend. He could be honest with him, no matter how much it hurt. Pulling back into the shadows so his voice would not carry to the laughing quartet on the lawn he asked, "Have you ever felt that…. Well, that somehow what you have is more than you deserve, and that somewhere out there someone is waiting to take it away?"

Clark was taken aback. "Bruce! What is this?"

His old friend avoided the superhuman's eyes and instead looked at the toes of his boots which were black as usual. Old habits died hard.

"Clark, do you believe in God?"

A light feminine voice spoke with sudden irony. "You _are_ getting old."

"Diana!" Clark lowered his glasses and frowned at her. Sometimes she was not the most subtle of women. "This is important."

She laughed. "You're telling me?"

As soon as the words left his mouth, her husband realized his mistake. He had met her Gods. She had insisted they dedicate little Bruce to them while her mother Hippolyte and several other divine beings had looked on.

"Bruce," Diana spoke, her tone serious and colored with concern. "The important question is: Do you?"

He looked beyond her to his son and daughter-in-law, at their laughing baby and then, at the older couple before him. There was something there. Something he didn't know, couldn't understand. Somehow, no matter how hard he tried, he was always on the outside of it. As if he was afraid.

Now, wasn't that something? The Batman afraid?

"Princess, I just don't know."

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Later that night the man who had been the Batman lay in his monstrous bed wide awake. His small grandson lay nearby, sheltered in a warm haven of blankets and pillows, safely nestled so he would not fall. Koriand'r and his father had gone on patrol with several of the other guardians of Gotham and its surrounding areas while he had stayed home to baby-sit.

Baby-sitting. The Batman.

No, not baby-sitting. Surrendering. Letting go.

All a part of growing old.

Of death.

Disturbed without knowing why, but having a sense of what needed to be done, he dialed another old friend and asked for a favor.

The feminine squeal on the other end of the line was enough to tell him she was on her way.

Leaving Barda, one of the New Gods, to watch over his son's treasure, knowing the child was in capable hands—probably more capable than his—he left the mansion to slip behind the wheel of one of his multitudinous vehicles and sped down the dusty road toward Gotham. Checking the monitors, he made certain the Bat-bots were in place as back-up. Then, confident with his security measures, he turned his attention to the task ahead.

Soon an ebon-winged figure emerged from the cockpit-like seat of the sedan to move with lightning swiftness over the roof-tops of the darkened city, making his way towards one particular spot. In reality, it was a moment in time he flew towards, one that was forever written upon his heart in blood. A dark place. Or rather, a hallowed place.

If his black heart really knew what hallowed was.

 _This_ place. Crime Alley.

The years had actually been kind to it, for it was no longer a stinking filth-ridden byway where good people need fear for their hard-earned savings and their lives. Instead it had been reborn and was once again what it had been when he was a child: A place of light and laughter, a flower-strewn avenue which led to the newly renovated theater district. Most nights it was filled with Moms and Dads, with children, lovers and fools.

Tonight though, it was empty, as if it had known he would come.

Silently he landed, retracting the mechanical wings which had borne him aloft and stepped into the ebon shadows of a newly renovated building. The brilliant blue neon sign atop it, less than three months old, sparked and buzzed, its death gasps casting an eerie glow over the expensive Paver stones that now lined the street.

Here, in the shadow of what had once been a movie theater, Bruce Wayne's life had ended and the Batman's begun. Kneeling he reverently placed a gloved hand on the precise spot where so many years ago his parent's blood had run thick and red. He closed his eyes and listened to the sound of the shot. It still haunted him more than forty years later. So did the vision of his mother's white pearls spilling onto the red ground, rolling far and wide as though seeking to escape the insanity.

This was where he had lost his gods. His parents. It was the place where any faith he had had died as well.

"Mom. Dad," he whispered, tears spilling down his thin lined cheeks. "I'm so sorry."

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Nightwing raised his head, glancing at the woman who waited beside him. She nodded, a grim determined look on her beautiful heart-shaped face. And then he sighed. This was one of those nights when he had to step back, to let her go in before him, and it was no easier now than it had been the first time he had agreed to do so. But she had insisted. And he understood. Her own return from the dead was miraculous. So had his been. Roy and Donna and so many others had not been so lucky. Their deaths had hit her hard. And then after John's birth, as he held the small wonder in his hands, she had made him grudgingly promise he would learn to recognize his limitations: learn to admit that his human body was no match for the likes of many of the rag-tag metahuman villains who still ran wild on the earth, venting their anger and frustration in mindless destruction.

The trouble was, he felt really good. Externally and internally he was twenty-five again, rejuvenated thanks to the age-reversing effects of the Lazarus Pit. He could run faster and breath easier than he had in years. He could jump and somersault like a boy of ten. But he also knew these were not his only strengths. He was a master at thinking and planning. Discovering. Detecting.

And being a father.

Kory had held his face in her hands and gazed into his crystal blue eyes, her own jade-green ones full of tears. She wanted him _alive_. Well. Whole. Not only for her, but for his son. She had argued powerfully—and he smiled at the word—that she was both stronger and faster than him. That the powers she had were given to her for a reason, X'Hal knew, and she should use them.

To defend her city. To guard her children.

To protect him.

"I have watched you die once, my love," she had whispered, kissing his lips, "I do not intend to do so again."

He could have said the same thing.

He nodded to her now and watched her take off, a fiery crimson trail lighting the night sky as she passed. Soon she was lost from his sight as she descended, dropping down behind one of the supposedly abandoned warehouses below. He drew a deep breath and sighed. Every time he became anxious or frustrated she had told him to hold the image of his young son's face before him and to remember what his own life had been without his father; to consider the man he might have been had the Graysons not plunged to their deaths on that fateful night. And even more, to consider the fate of the man who had taken his father's place. Not all little boys survived. Some did, but others died a little everyday.

Like Bruce.

Waiting for Kory's signal his thoughts turned to the older man and he smiled. _Babysitting_ …. Who'd have believed it?

A sudden cry and blast of red-hot solar power alerted him that something was wrong. Kory was not to have attacked but only scouted the area below. Standing tall, he aimed his night-vision glasses at the warehouse, hoping to catch a glimpse of what was going on inside. A second blast erupted and shingles flew off the roof as a solid form burst out and flew away into the night.

It was not his wife.

Telling himself to trust her he waited…about ten seconds...and then swift as thought the Night-line snaked out into the darkness and he was gone.

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Not far away Nightstar, the striking twenty-something daughter of Nightwing and Princess Koriand'r of Tamaran, paused in her patrol. She had recognized the red star power that illuminated the night and knew her mother was in the midst of a battle. Nodding to the others who patrolled with her and signaling them to go on, she bent her arms toward the glow and her will towards arriving at the scene of the conflict as quickly as possible.

Gliding silently over the old section of Gotham that was her regular beat, she hesitated as she noticed a dark still figure emerging from the shadows of what used to be one of Lex Luthor's prize properties and into the false dawn of the well-lit avenue which led to the Leslie Thompson Memorial Park.

"Grandpa?" she called as she descended to the paved avenue.

"Kory! Kory, where are you?"

Nightwing landed with ease outside of the vast warehouse they had targeted and glanced about warily. Just because he had seen one metahuman take flight, that didn't mean there weren't others left behind. Still he had not received the agreed-upon signal from his wife and that had him worried. Moving through the shadows he found an open window and quickly slipped inside.

Everything was quiet. Too quiet. He drew a deep breath and tried again to place the creature he had seen fleeing the warehouse as he had winged through the dark night towards it. There had been a trace of purple on its costume, like his wife's, but no glow, no power seething from within. It had flown, swiftly, drawing up into a ball and then spurted forward almost faster than his eye could follow.

Someone new no doubt. Another disgruntled grandchild of a hero, or worse, the old hero themselves. Some were down and out, without support, living on the streets. More had perished in that last battle between Captain Marvel and Superman than the ones whose bones had littered the battlefield. Some of the survivors had gone mad, unable to cope with what they had seen.

A sudden noise drew his attention and he halted. Behind a tall stack of wooden crates he spied a thick lock of deep red hair.

"Kory?"

There was a pause and then he called again.

"Kory, is that you?"

"Dick." The word was whispered, curt and short. "Get out of here."

"Kory, I…." He glanced left and right and then moved into the shadows cast by the stack of boxes he was near. "I'm coming over."

"Dick, no! Stay where you are." Her voice was urgent, frightened. Then he saw her stand straight up and step into the light. "No!" Hers eyes fastened somewhere above him and she screamed as her starbolts flew. "Get down. Now!"

"What?" His lips formed the question, but even as they did, he obeyed her without thought.

It saved his life.

Seconds later he awoke on the concrete floor, his head throbbing and pounding. He was nearly blind. As he heard his wife's star power lash out again, he raised a gloved hand to his head and brought it away covered with blood.

That shocked him. Someone or something had shot him. Plain shot him. No super powers. No metahuman surprises. No starbolts or lasers. Just a bullet.

 _Just_ a bullet? Quaint in 2022 perhaps, but just as deadly.

From the corona which surrounded her he could tell that Koriand'r now stood in front of the wooden crates nearest him, her hands blazing. She had forsaken her hiding place to protect him. Feeling guilty, as though he had somehow let her down, he tried to crawl towards her, but found the effort left him breathless. He hadn't realized he was that badly hurt. It was just a bullet wound after all. He raised his head to try to tell her that, but found that he had lost his bearings. His head pounded furiously. His vision was blurred. Still, he knew she shouldn't be that hard to find with the power of the unbridled sun pouring through her. Lifting his head again, he found her face and concentrated on it.

It was grim. More so than a bullet grazing his forehead should have made it, but then again…. He grinned. She was rather possessive.

An instant later he regretted grinning and passed out.

From somewhere behind a pile of twisted and burning boxes a pale hand drew back, holstering the automatic weapon it held. A sick grin twisted its already twisted face and a voice low-pitched and surly snarled, "Next time, boy."

Then it was gone.

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"Dick? Dick?"

The man in question opened his eyes slowly and tried to focus. Someone was bending over him demanding his attention.

He didn't want to give it.

"Dick. X'Hal," they breathed. Turning to someone else nearby, they said with emotion, "there's so much blood."

"He'll be all right. He's strong," a gruff voice spoke with authority, it's tone harsh as though anger could mask the emotion within it.

He didn't recognize either of them. Or did he? Someone from his past?

Another out of focus face came into his line of sight and a cool hand touched his hot cheek, "Dad? Can you hear me?"

Dad?

Nightwing blinked again and tried to sit up.

"No, you don't." The first voice returned. "Lay back down. You mustn't move. Understand?" Strong hands forced him to obey as they pinned him to the floor. A whispered question was directed toward the owner of the other voice. "Can he be moved?"

"With care. I'll call the Bat-bots. They can carry him to the Manor and keep him steady." It paused. "We wouldn't want to leave him here long. It's drafty. Cold."

Cold? He felt like he was laying on a bed of fire.

"Besides, whoever did this might return."

"With all of us here?" The out of focus face spoke again. "They'd have to be crazy."

Another pause and then, "That's what I am afraid of."

Something beeped, seemingly far away. Nightwing raised a hand to try and chase the sound away and felt cool fingers encircle his. Then he heard a sudden intake of breath.

"Oh, my God."

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"I can't believe you left him here unattended. Bruce, what got into you?"

Dick Grayson awoke to harsh whispers that he supposed were meant to be too low to disturb him. He licked his lips and opened his mouth to call his wife's name, but his throat was too dry and it came out as little more than a soft croak.

"I didn't leave him unattended. Barda was here. _Barda_. I left the robots outside as well, standing guard. You saw the condition they were in." Bruce hesitated, drawing a breath. "I doubt if even _you_ could have stopped whoever it was."

There was a moment of icy silence. "If I _had_ been here, I would have stopped them...or died."

"Barda almost did." He ran a hand over his forehead. The tall dark-haired woman had been carted off by Diana the day before, taken to the Isle for healing. He hadn't been able to reach Scott yet or her daughter.

Koriand'r watched him, trying to reign in her temper. They had been through this before, several times, the first only moments after they had arrived at the manor with Nightwing's wounded form in tow. She glanced at the hardwood floor near the entrance to the room and frowned. The hole she had blasted through it had been hastily patched and a rug tossed over it.

"I'm sorry— _for_ _that_ ," she replied, tight-lipped.

Bruce stared at her, almost frantic. "Do you think I _wanted_ this to happen? Don't you think I live _every_ _day_ knowing some crazed maniac may try to take me down, or worse yet, destroy _me_ by destroying what I dare to love?" He hesitated and glanced at his wounded son, feeling the dark shadow hanging over him. "Don't you know they already have?"

A silence fell in the room during which Dick tried to raise his head, desperately wanting to intervene, needing to stop these two people whom he loved from tearing each other apart, but as he did, a severe pain shot through his temples which almost made him black out. Through the ebon night that sought to overwhelm him, he heard his mentor's voice break with emotion.

"If I could take his place I would."

Koriand'r was silent a moment. "I know that," she said at last, though there was no acquittal in her voice. "Bruce, forgive me. I know you are doing all that is humanly possible…."

Grim words interrupted her. "No. I _won't_ forgive you. There is nothing to forgive. _I_ have failed. It is I who need to be forgiven, but not now—not yet. Not until we find whoever did this! And if I have done everything _humanly_ possible, then I will just have to do what is beyond human strength." He drew a breath and Dick heard his booted feet move swiftly across the floor. "Excuse me, Princess, I have work to do."

Koriand'r's deep voice was strained. "Let me come with you— "

"No. You have work as well, _here_. Keep him safe. You are probably the only one who can. And _don't_ let him get up." The footsteps moved away and out the door. They seemed to disappear but a moment later they were back.

"Koriand'r?"

"Yes, Bruce?"

She was closer to his bed now. Her voice caught and broke on his former guardian's name. He could tell she was crying. Why? Was he worse than he thought? Dick forced his eyes open and turned his head just in time to see his mentor strike away a tear and turn from the door.

"I _am_ sorry."

The movement made him nauseous and he moaned without meaning too. His wife pivoted sharply, suddenly realizing he was awake. She glanced at the hallway but the old man was gone, and then she approached the bed, wiping her eyes quickly and planting a faint smile on a face worn with worry and fatigue.

"Dick? Love, are you awake?"

"Kory?" he whispered hoarsely, swallowed and then tried again, "Kory, what…?"

"Shh, be still. You have lost a great deal of blood."

He frowned. That hurt too. "It was _just_ a bullet, " he rasped.

"A bullet, yes. But just? Not quite." The tall red-head laid her hand on his forehead and shuddered at the fever raging there. "Bruce and Clark agree, there is something more to it. Some new technology. I think the word the STAR doctor used was 'nannites'. Apparently the bullet contained them. They are like microscopic living machines and they began to burrow into your veins shortly after the 'bullet' deposited them underneath your skin. They work very quickly and were wrecking havoc with your system. They think they have them stopped for the moment, but…." She paused and drew a shuddering breath. "You could have died."

For some strange reason he felt the urge to comfort _her_. "But I didn't. Kory, I'm here." Her chin trembled and she sobbed once before regaining control. Dick stretched out his hand, refusing to give in to the wave of fatigue that was washing over him, threatening to carry him away. "Kory, what is it?" There _had_ to be more. "Tell me…."

She sniffed and for a second her great green eyes grew distant. Bruce had warned her not to. Told her it would be a mistake, that if she told him, she _would_ lose him because once he knew, nothing short of Hell freezing over would keep him off the streets and in that bed where he belonged.

Still, she loved him too much to pretend or lie. And he had a _right_ to know.

Leaning forward she kissed his brow where the bandage covered the damage left by the near fatal shot and then ran long golden fingers through his thick black waves.

"Dick…. It's John."

He knew before she said the words. "Oh, God," he whispered.

"The baby is gone."

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TWO

Dick Grayson sat in the sun near one of the massive windows that fronted the vast southern lawn of the newly restored Wayne Manor, watching the sunlight play off the roof of the solarium and bounce from treetop to treetop, casting long shadows across the lush green grass. Diana was outside with her son, Bruce, attempting to keep him quiet and out of the way. Or perhaps just trying to keep another little boy out of mind.

As if that would be possible.

Clark as Superman was out looking for John. Had been looking for John. Every minute. Everywhere. But he had found nothing. No sign. No demands. And thank God, no body.

The man who spent his life winging off skyscrapers and playing tag with super-villains felt his knuckles go bone-white as once again a wave of impotence swept over him. They would not let him go. At times it seemed they would not even let him think. He was being drugged. Oh, it was for his own good—doctor's orders—to keep him immobile so the now dormant mechanical 'bugs' in his system would not wake, but still it angered him. No, it _infuriated_ him. This was _his_ child. His fight.

His _right_.

Since he had awakened there had been a constant stream of x-rays technicians and specialists from STAR labs parading through the recreation of his old room. They had all certified him as healthy, but none would take the responsibility of swearing he would stay that way. None would say for certain that the small creatures which had been planted in his bloodstream were not simply ticking time-bombs waiting to explode.

He had begged Clark to burn them out. Pleaded with Bruce to use the high-tech medical equipment in the cave, to let him make that decision—to take the chance—but he knew by the look on their faces that they were afraid.

Superman and Batman, afraid.

Afraid he would die.

Bruce had told him he believed the nannites were merely lying dormant. He had looked at one of them in the cave and believed the technology _far_ too sophisticated for them to have mastered its complexities so quickly. And so, while others searched the air, sea and land for his tiny defenseless son, he had been consigned to a chair like an invalid, forced to watch the sunlight play off the tiles and the wind sweep the grassy lawn, and to wait.

If that wasn't death, he didn't know what was.

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No more.

Seventy-two hours before his son had disappeared.

Twelve hours after that he had awakened to find his life forever changed. Awakened to find a bevy of doctors buzzing about him and his family treating him as though he were made of fragile clay.

Twelve hours after that he had begun to systematically skip every other dose of medicine they brought him, allowing his mind to take over controlling the pain.

Today he had taken nothing. No drugs. No food as well, for he couldn't be certain they were not lacing it as well, fully expecting that he might try to do exactly what he was going to do.

Escape.

He was hungry but his head was clear. It was also pounding like a jackhammer on concrete.

Good. A grim smile lit his face. It would keep him alert.

Today he went after his son.

He hadn't seen his wife in two days. As soon as she had known his condition was stable and that he wasn't going anywhere, she had joined the hunt. His daughter Mar'i had volunteered to look after him, but even at twenty-two, she was still a child. It wouldn't be hard to deceive her. Dick Grayson closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He really didn't want to trick her, but they had left him no choice. Their compassion and concern were killing him. He couldn't just sit here sipping sodas and staring at shadows as if his life was already over. He had to be on the move. He _needed_ to be on the move.

God willing, he would survive long enough to find his son.

Eyes still closed he offered a silent prayer to the One he had made peace with years before. After Kory had been returned. After his own death and resurrection. His wife had always been deeply religious. Her belief was an inspiration to him. After long years of rebellion and pain, he finally understood that it was simply no good to be alone. "God. X'Hal…. Whatever you choose to call yourself. My child is out there, somewhere. In the arms of a madman. Grant me the time to bring him home."

Bruce and Clark were good, probably the best, but there was something they were not.

John's father.

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Dick shifted in the chair and started to rise, but then he heard a light footfall outside the door and knew Nightstar was on her way in. Relaxing his white-knuckled grip on the arms, he leaned back and adopted a dreamy air.

His daughter entered, her long black hair waving behind her, the usual tray in her hands. Placing it on the table beside him, she leaned down and kissed him on the forehead just above his scar. "How are you today, Dad?"

He glanced at her absent-mindedly and then turned back to the view through the windows. "Just fine. And you?"

"Great." She couldn't look at him. Her heart was breaking, both with fear and hatred of what she was forced to be a part of.

"Any news?" he asked quietly.

Mar'i frowned and looked out the window. The lawn was empty now. Diana had either joined Clark and the others on the hunt or come inside. Little Bruce was going to stay with his Aunt Barda. She was mending and they all felt it would do her good to be trusted with her friend's small son. She had not forgiven herself for failing or for forgetting. When she had awakened, she had found her memory blank. All she could recall was a curious noise at the window and a faint blue glow about the child. And then nothing.

Nightstar sighed. " 'Fraid not. Ibn has added his forces, but so far there is nothing. No clue. It's like John's just disappeared without a trace." She turned to look at him finally, tears in her blank green eyes. "God, Dad, why did this have to happen?"

Dick Grayson gritted his teeth against the pain.

"God only knows."

She moved to face him and knelt in front of the chair. His apparent weakness disturbed her almost as much as what she was doing, though she knew it was right. It was the only way to keep him alive. He could be so, well, _stubborn_ some times. Noting the pain that pinched the corners of his blue eyes she asked, "Are you in pain, Dad?"

He drew a breath. "A little."

His dark-haired daughter frowned. "Is it your head?"

"No." He bit the word off. "I was thinking of your brother…."

She bit her lip. "Clark is looking for him. _And_ Diana." Her hand went to his knee and she gazed up at him, looking as she had when she was only ten years old and he had still been her world. "Dad, you couldn't do any more than they are…. Grandpa said so."

Dear Bruce, he laughed silently, still trying to best the Grim Reaper. Without warning, he changed the subject. "How is your Mom?"

"Worried about you." Nightstar answered instantly, meeting his keen blue eyes. She held them, her beautiful young face deadly serious. "Dad, don't even _think_ about it. _Don't_ try to do anything dangerous. Mom's beside herself already. If something happened to you…." She hesitated, lifting her hand to his cheek. "Dad, I almost lost you in the war. I had to watch you die in that cave in Africa. I don't know if I could stand it if anything happened…."

"Nightstar…." His fingers closed over hers.

"Dad, please? Promise you'll stay put?" Her enormous jade-green eyes grew moist and she sniffed as she took his hand in both of hers. "Daddy? _Please_?"

Dick Grayson stared out the window again, his brow deeply furrowed in spite of the fact that it hurt like hell. Glancing at his shaken daughter he made a decision to do something he had rarely done in his life.

He lied.

"I promise," he whispered and then thought, "God forgive me. _She_ never will."

Nightstar stared at him a moment and then beamed. She rose and kissed his hair, then handed him the tray and headed for the door. "There's a big meeting tonight here at the Manor. Everyone is to be gathered. I think Grandpa might let you come. I'll ask…" She stopped, looking at the dejected figure by the window. "No, I'll _tell_ him he has to let you come.

"Dad?"

He turned slowly and looked at her. What she said went straight as a dagger to his heart.

"Thanks. I love you."

Swallowing hard, he nodded. "I love you too, Mar'i. Always remember that. I love you too."

Half an hour later he was gone.

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THREE

"Dick?"

Thin-skinned knuckles rapped on the heavy wooden door and long fingers showed through the crack as it opened into the room. A dark head followed and then the slender ramrod-straight frame that carried it, swathed in deep green and gold. A silken waistcoat flashed momentarily as the cape was swept aside, like a summer sun settling in the dark night's embrace. "Dick, the meeting has begun and Mar'i said…."

Ibn Al' Xuffasch hesitated just inside the door. His keen eyes, deep in color and razor-sharp as a falcon's, surveyed the empty room noting the open window and the perfectly preserved bed linens.

The son of the bat sighed.

Then he smiled.

The night they had brought Dick to the manor, wounded, perhaps dying, he had listened to the doctors, to his father and to the older man's wife. Even to his lover. Still, he had argued against the decision they had made. He knew Dick too well. He understood their fear, even shared it, but it was wrong. Dick was a man. A man among men. This was _his_ child. His _son_.

He had a right to choose.

Slowly Ibn backed out of the room and closed the door, turning the knob. A moment later as he descended the broad staircase into the elegant entry of the newly restored manor, he literally ran into the one he had claimed for his own. She was looking towards the parlor where the might of the several worlds was gathered and not watching where she was going. He halted and caught her in his arms as she stumbled and lost her footing. Her jade-green eyes were bright and her black hair fell about her shoulders in an ebon wave. She smiled and reached for him.

After a slow kiss, she pulled away. "Where's Dad?"

Ibn's eyes met hers. "Asleep," he answered quickly.

"You should have awakened him. He wanted to be here…." She started to move past him, towards the hall that led to her father's room. He caught her lavender-covered arm.

"I tried." His piercing eyes held hers, searching them. "Did you drug his food?"

Nightstar looked down. She _knew_ his opinion on this. " _I_ didn't.

"Then someone else?"

She bit her lip and nodded. "The butler."

The young man tilted his dark head and almost laughed. "The _butler_ did it?"

She hit him on the chest. Hard. "One of those mechanical things Grandpa programs. You know, the Alfred clones."

"Oh." He took hold of her arm and began to walk her down the steps. As she protested, insisting she should go to her Dad's room and try to rouse him, Ibn took her by the waist and whispered, "Let him be. The choice has been made."

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Some time later as they sat in the immense dining room of Wayne Manor, half a dozen of the galaxy's mightiest heroes gathered at one long mahogany table, something began to gnaw at the back of Nightstar's consciousness. She sat with her fists to her chin, listening to the report of Big Barda's daughter and her friend, Avia. She was facing her grandpa and Clark and Diana. Avia reported that her mother was doing well and that she had managed to remember one minor detail. Just before falling unconscious she had seen the house grow unnaturally dark and she had heard a sound, like the wind, or some sort of beast howling. Then the light on the Bat-bots outside the window faltered.

After that she remembered nothing.

Her Dad's surrogate father then spoke up informing them that the Bat-bots had been infected with the same infinitesimal nannites that were threatening the life of his son. They had disrupted the complicated systems, working their way through the built-in defensives, literally shutting the giant guardians down. He mentioned as well that he had found indications that something had been placed over the windows and a noxious substance introduced into the ventilation system, traces of which still clung to the fibers of the new carpet. A substance which when ingested was deadly, but when inhaled produced either hallucinations or a mild form of amnesia.

Clark and Diana spoke next, reporting that they had flown far and wide for three days without finding anything. The beautiful Amazon was still speaking and had begun to draw something from a small pouch tethered to her white gown, when it hit her.

Nightstar's head came free of her hands and she turned to glare at Ibn. Her fists came down on the table hard enough to rattle the boards beneath its carved feet. Everyone in the room, except her lover, looked at her as if she had gone mad. Diana stood open-mouthed, a small piece of paper dangling from her fingers. .

Bruce rose slowly and looked at his grand-daughter. "Mar'i?"

She was fuming. Her breathe coming in short gasps. "Ibn, _you_ tell him."

Slowly all eyes turned to the sleek young man who silently occupied one of a pair of high-backed winged chairs near the fire. He had not joined in, but sat listening. With inherent grace he rose and leaning on the wolf's head cane he carried, looked at her, his eyes a dark mask.

"And what should I tell them, my sweet?"

Nightstar's fists were glowing violet, smoldering like her deep green eyes. "I don't _believe_ you did this."

"Did what?" Diana glanced at Clark and he shrugged, signaling her to wait.

Bruce rose and walked towards his son, towards the young man who was a part of him and yet so much more a part of his power-crazed grandfather and _his_ beautiful child, Talia.

"Son, what is it?"

Ibn tilted his head and ran thin fingers through shoulder-length black hair.

"Nightwing is gone."

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Bruce stood in the room, gripping the arm of the chair his eldest son had recently occupied. The bones were white beneath his thinned skin. The great window before him stood open to the night.

"How long?" He could hear his grand-daughter's toe tapping behind him. "Nightstar?"

She growled low in her throat. Her hands were glowing powerfully enough to illuminate the room. " _Ibn_?"

The young man shrugged. His cape was thrown back over one shoulder and the gold watch-chain at his waist glinted like a cat's eye. "I do not know for certain. When I arrived to retrieve him before the meeting started, he was gone. The chair was empty as you see it now. The bed un-slept in." He lifted his cane and pointed toward the table to Bruce's left. "As you can see, his food is uneaten."

The older man fingered the chicken-salad sandwich and frowned. "Two hours at least then. Most likely more." Lifting his graying head, he glanced with concern at his half-alien grand-child. "When did you bring this to him?"

Her mouth was set in a hard line. The white teeth cutting into the rosy field of her lips. "Four-thirty."

He nodded. "It's past ten now. I would imagine he left immediately after you did."

Her nostrils flared. "X'Hal," she breathed as she began to tremble.

"Almost six hours." Bruce added as he turned back to the open window. "He could be anywhere by now. And if he doesn't want us to find him. We _won't_."

Ibn stared at the woman he loved, aware that something was wrong. She was _furious_ with him as she had a right to be. But there was something more. He raised his hand and took a step toward her.

Out of the corner of his eye Bruce noted the familiar flare-up. The light that had pulsed gently in the room began to throb like a carnival ride gone haywire. He glanced at the center of the storm and saw Dick's daughter, her lithe formed bathed in purple light, and then launched himself without thought in the boy's direction. A moment later a deep violet star-bolt split the air where he had been, bursting through the thick wood paneling to shatter the large leaded window at the top of the stair.

Ibn lay on the floor beneath his father, shaken. Bruce rounded on the girl, his blue eyes narrowed with fear and rage. " _Mar'i_ , there is no excuse for that kind of loss of control! I don't care what you think—"

He stopped. She was sobbing like a child with a broken heart. He glanced at his son who nodded, indicating he was well, and then rose to go to her side. She had fallen to her knees and had her head in her hands. Kneeling, he laid his hand on her shoulder and leaned towards her. Through the heart-deep cries, he heard her speak, but couldn't catch the words.

"What?" Bruce petted her head like she was five years old. "Child?"

As Diana and Clark appeared in the doorway, with the others trailing close behind, she fell into his arms. "You lied. You son of a bitch, you lied!" She beat Bruce's arm with her fist, bruising it, and turned to stare out the open window into the anomalous night.

"Dad, how _could_ you lie to me?"

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Dick knew he was taking chances. _Big_ chances. This was the first place they would hunt for him. But he had to go back. Back to where it had all started.

Back to the warehouse where he had been shot.

Oh, he knew Bruce had most likely turned the place inside out, had undoubtedly been over it with something finer than the finest-toothed comb, but he _had_ to see for himself. The yellow police tape, seemingly quaint in this latter day, was still in place marking the spot where he had fallen. He carefully stepped over it where it was sagging and examined the floor. It was still blood-stained. Beyond his outline lay a pile of singed and blackened crates. He advanced and turned a couple of them over with his gloved hands, sifting through the ashes of what seemed to have been a cargo of toys—something akin to a slinky or other metal gyro, though their fused skeletons were nothing now but twisted unrecognizable scrap. With a booted foot he pushed the last box out of the way and then stopped dead.

Someone had left him a note.

He sucked at his teeth and squatted beside the burnt debris. Bruce had to have looked under the boxes. If _he_ had thought of it, then the Batman certainly had. And that meant someone had to have returned and put them back in place, leaving this on the floor for him to find, knowing he would return.

That was not a pleasant thought. Whoever it was, they knew him.

 _Really_ knew him.

His blue eyes narrowed as his finger traced the letters on the floor, written in red as though to emulate the blood he had shed.

' _YOU ARE MINE_ ,' it said simply. And it was signed not with a name but with a sigil or sign, something like a lop-sided smile or a two tossed on its side with an eye winking above it.

Suppressing a shudder he wondered who it could be. Who was alive who knew him so well? Most of his old enemies had perished in the Metahuman conflict or died of old age. He looked at the sick grin and thought of the Joker. But he was long dead. There was always Two-Face, whereabouts and mental condition unknown…. but this wasn't his style.

Standing and stretching, he lifted his hands to the sky, glancing out the hole in the ceiling his wife's starbolts had left. Thinking of her brought a bittersweet smile. If she hadn't been so worried about him dying, she would have wanted to _kill_ him for—

A sudden explosion in his brain sent him to his knees. He gasped and sucked in air. Falling to the ground, he curled into a tight ball, resting his right temple on the hard cool cement as fireworks exploded behind his clenched eyes.

Somewhere, not very far away, someone was laughing.

Nightwing coughed and a small trickle of blood ran from his nose.

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FOUR

Diana advanced into the center of the room, staring at the old man and his grand-child. Old, she thought, because he looked it. Old and tired. She turned back to her husband and met his bright blue eyes. He followed her and then moved beyond her to lay a hand on his friend's shoulder.

The man who had been the Batman looked up, tears in his eyes. "We were wrong, you know. We should have let him go. We made him choose." He stroked Nightstar's hair. " _I_ made him choose."

Ibn had regained his feet and as Bruce rose to face his friend, he slipped in and scooped Mar'i from the floor. She didn't resist him, but clung to his neck, still sobbing. Her green eyes were red and raw with tears and as he met them, she acknowledged the fact that there would be time enough for him to pay—tomorrow.

Tonight she needed him.

She needed to grieve.

Clark said nothing. He turned to his wife and took the paper from her hand. "Bruce."

His hand was on the back of the chair. If it had not been for his exo-skeleton, he might have fallen down. "Yes? Clark," he answered, pulling himself together. "What is it?"

"We found a note."

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"What is this, a _sick_ joke?"

Clark shook his head, pursing his lips as was his habit. His hand reached for the glasses that were a part of the disguise he no longer wore. Diana walked to his side and faced her son's god-father. "We had followed a trail. A woman had been reported struggling with a small red-headed male child. A _strong_ child." She paused. "They had been spotted on the west side of Gotham."

"Here?" The grey-black eyebrows rose. "In _my_ city? Impossible. I have eyes everywhere. My sentinels…."

"Are fallible. And even _they_ cannot be everywhere." Her blue eyes narrowed. She _knew_ the pain he was feeling. If _her_ son had been missing…. "Even they cannot see everything."

Bruce growled low in his throat. "Like Hell they can't."

"Then they can be _disabled_. Perhaps controlled."

He was sitting before the fire now, the thin slip of paper clenched in his fingers. The words were written in a curious cursive, slightly askew, indicating a troubled but clever mind. On it there was a grotesque representation of his former ward's costumed form and the words, _'For sale, cheap. One crime-fighter, slightly used and much abused. Going fast. Won't last.'_ There was a break where the paper had been folded and then it ended, _'If interested, call Hell and ask for me by name. But come quick, the merchandise will begin to smell after twenty-two hours.'_

Bruce sighed and opened his mouth to speak.

Someone else beat him to it. "So John was only the bait."

Bruce looked up quickly as did the others. The front door stood open. The night had disintegrated into storms and lightning flashed beyond the rectangular portal. Silhouetted in it was the form of a tall strong woman. On Earth she would have been referred to as Amazonian, but he knew better. She was from Tamaran. And she was his son's wife.

Soaked to the skin, her bright copper hair pressed to her form, she stood dripping on the high-priced Persian rug. Her mouth was set in a line and her green eyes were at once savage as the night and tamed by sorrow. She explained that she had been delayed by a boat which had overturned with the approach of the storm. Seven lives had been saved because she had stopped, and yet each second she had been delayed had taken a year from her life.

"It was Dick they wanted all along."

Bruce gestured away the Bot-butler who was fretting over the wet carpet. "I'm afraid so."

Koriand'r's fingers folded into fists. "And who are _they_? Or _who_ is he or she?"

Diana moved to face her. "Koriand'r.…"

The Tamaranean's hand rose to stop her. "No. No kindness. _No_ sympathy. This is not a time for softness but for steel." The princess's head was held high. Her back stiff as a pike. "Tell me."

"We don't know—" Bruce cleared his throat and Diana stopped. "What?"

The older man stood and walked to face his alien daughter-in-law, knowing the beliefs that separated them were bridged by the love of one man. He held her eyes and then indicated she should follow him to the cave which still lay buried deep within the earth beneath Wayne Manor. He had had the familiar haunt recreated as well. It was, after all, a part of his soul.

She refused to move. "Bruce? What is it?"

" _You_ may not know, but I think I do."

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She had held her tongue as long as she could. Once they had left the others upstairs, she turned on him, her green eyes blazing. "I feel as if the world is closing in on me. X'Hal, _how_ could this have happened? He was in your care, old man." She left unvoiced the words, _"They were both in your care_ , " but he heard them anyway.

Bruce laughed. A hard bitter laugh. _Old_ man. That was about right. _Impotent_ old man. He didn't answer her but asked, "Have you spoken to your daughter?"

Koriand'r's toe was tapping. Like her daughter's. "About _your_ son?"

The gray head nodded. He glanced at her hands and saw they were still golden, if somewhat pale. "He was right, you know."

"Right? _Right_?" She could still see her child's jade eyes, wide with grief and worry, trapped between her own disappointment with Ibn and her fear for what her mother might do to him.

Koriand'r had _not_ been gentle when she questioned him.

"Yes. Right."

The princess drew a breath. "About _what_?"

Bruce shook his head. "We tried to cage a tiger. We were wrong. Strong creatures die in captivity."

"He is not an animal or _creature_. Dick has a mind. We tried to protect him. He is not well," her voice broke, " now…."

"No, we were killing him, as sure as whoever it is sent this note and did this _thing_." He faced her, his blue eyes earnest. "He _had_ to go. Had to— "

"Be pig-headed and single-minded as the man who raised him?" Her temper was flaring and scarlet lines ran round her nails and fingers. "Why are we standing here debating this? _Where_ is he?" She took a step forward. " _Do you know?"_

"Not where, not yet, but…." Bruce deliberately turned his back on her without acknowledging her anger and turned to the computers. Then he began to punch a series of letters and numbers into it in a systematic pattern. "Even though it makes no sense, I may have an idea of who."

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Nightwing opened his eyes. The air was close and still. He couldn't see anything, but he could hear water rushing by, as if he was by a riverfront or inside some sort of power plant. He rolled over and drew a breath and then regretted it instantly as excruciating pain shot through his frame.

"Awake at last. Sleepy boy."

The voice was quiet. Calm.

Demented.

"Are we comfy?"

Dick spit out blood and whispered, "Yeah, I'm just great."

"Oh," the voice seemed to pout, "too bad. We can remedy that."

A tiny explosion in his arm made him scream and glance down. Even though the lighting was dim, his eyes had adjusted enough that he could see a thin black river of blood running down his forearm onto his hand.

"Better?"

The crimefighter clamped his mouth shut. Somehow it didn't seem prudent to answer.

"Better."

Silence overtook the room. He listened intently trying to determine his tormentor's sex and size from the footsteps as they shifted from side to side, twisting knobs and pressing buttons. It was impossible. They made very little sound and what he did catch, made no sense. He lay on the floor, stifling a groan, and then finally asked—because he couldn't stand it. "Is my son here?"

"Oh, goodness, no," came the instant reply. "No place for a child. Know that all too well. Parent bleeds. Child sees. Nasty. Nasty. Psychosis. Obsession."

Nightwing frowned. Who _was_ this madman?

He swallowed. "Am I going to die?"

A shadow moved through the deeper shadows that masked the room until it drew close. As it did, a hidden skylight opened in the ceiling above, inviting the moonlight to enter the small cramped space. He couldn't see much, just dingy concrete walls and wooden rafters over head. He was bound, hand and foot, and unable to move. As he pulled against his restraints, his captor came to his side. The figure silhouetted against the evening sky was slender, almost feminine, but tall and rangy like a man. One arm of its curious costume was bare, the other clad in a stylish tweed such as Bruce had often worn when playing the fop. Its hair, backlit by the stars, stood up as if being held for ransom. It wore an air of menace like a second skin and Dick forced himself to continue to stare as it reached out and turned on a light.

One side of its face was smiling, the blood-red lip turned up with a quirk. The other side frowned. One cheek was white as chalk and the other bronze, as though its owner had fallen asleep like Rip Van Winkle for twenty years only under the false light of a tanning bed. Its disheveled hair shone a tawny yellow, with a sick greenish tint, and gleamed like old gold.

"Who are you?" he whispered, wanting to move away but unable to shift even the tiniest bit.

The face came closer and he could see it was a jester's, split in half, as if its creator had been unable to determine what it wanted: a smiling clown or a harlequin gone made.

"You may call me, the Pretender."

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END PART ONE


	2. Chapter 2

GIFTS - PART TWO

oooooooooooooooooo

ONE

Dick awoke to the sound of a baby crying.

He opened his eyes, half expecting to find he was lying in his bed and that his wife's tanned and exquisite form would be nestled against his back. In a minute her long toes would nudge his calf and her husky voice tell him to go check their son.

It didn't.

Above him a single bare bulb burnt like a cold unfeeling eye, casting its harsh glow over the room. It swung as if someone had tapped it and then run. The analytical portion of his mind noted instantly the faded wallpaper and peeling plaster which indicated he had been moved. Unlike the cement box he had awakened in the time before, this place had once been lived in. It looked like a home.

Then he heard it again. The sound of tears. A child. A _young_ child, crying. Cautiously lifting his head from the ratty flooring, he rose to a seated position. A moment later he drew a deep breathe and stood.

So far, so good. No one attacked him and nothing exploded.

He glanced at his arm and saw the blood on it was still fairly fresh indicating very little time had passed since he had been confronted by the creature that called itself 'the Pretender'. His cool blue eyes sought to pierce the shadows which surrounded him, watching as the dancing bulb seemed to make them shift with a life of their own. Concentrating made his head hurt, but he did it, scanning the room until he was certain he was alone.

Here, at least.

As he paused sorting out his thoughts, the child cried out again and this time, he recognized it as his son. It took everything in him not to burst through the door calling his name. But he knew caution was necessary. Acting hastily might well get them both killed.

Moving with stealth he slipped into the hallway and began to make his way towards the spiral stair. He could hear John sobbing above him. The poor kid must have been terrified. As he began to ascend, a deep rage awakened within him, more profound than any he had ever known. It was one thing for his enemies to seek to kill him or Bruce, or even Kory...but an innocent child? A baby who in no way could defend itself? That was the act of something more than a madman.

It was the act of a beast.

As his foot touched the tattered carpet that lined the upstairs hall, he realized John was in the room on the left hand side and at the far end. Glancing both ways, assessing all exits and entrances, noting the positions of both windows and doors and whether or not they were open, he began to move towards him. If they were both to escape alive, the decisions he made might have to fly faster than Kory. He paused outside the door, his lean frame pressed to the wall and listened. He could hear nothing but the child's soft sobs, but that wasn't proof his son was alone. Steeling himself he plunged into the room head-first, rolling as he did, and landed in a fighting posture near its center. Air streamed in through an open window and an empty rocking chair—which held a crazy-quilt teddy bear—slowly rocked as if someone invisible occupied it. Behind him there was a crib and in it was a child with bright copper hair and great shining eyes, his hands reaching towards him.

Dick turned and stared at the boy. Then he shuddered and tears rolled down his cheeks. He glanced at the chair again and _knew_ it couldn't be that simple. Still, he couldn't let the boy stand there screaming, wondering why his Dad didn't pick him up.

"Johnny, it's Daddy. We need to— " Fire cut a path through his brain and he fell, hobbled by the pain. As he hit his knees he heard his son shriek.

 _"Da-dah!"_

He pressed his fingers into his temples and sought to find his center. His breathing was labored, but he managed to growl. "I don't...care...what you...do to me. But _please_...not...in front...of my son..."

"Ah, yes. The love of father and son. We know all about that, don't we, Tomas?"

Dick couldn't lift his head, but he watched as a pair of mismatched boots moved towards the crib. One pant leg was well pressed and pleated, like a business suit. The other was purple, knit, and showed the well-formed calf-muscles. He shifted ever so slightly and saw the Pretender lift his son from the crib. John was still sobbing, but became intrigued when the creature dangled a bouncing coil of metal in front of him like the ones he had found melted in the warehouse where he had first been shot. Then, seeming to sense his father's gaze, John wriggled in the Pretender's grasp and looked at him. Then he screamed again.

"Father and son," the Pretender repeated the words in a sing-song manner, "father and son. Meant to be together. In life." It's voice took on a curious edge as it gripped the baby's chubby arm. "And death."

Chills ran down Dick's spine. "Whatever...you want," he panted as he reached towards his child, "I'll do it. Don't...hurt...my son. He's only...a baby."

"Now that, Grayson, is what I wanted to hear."

Dick pivoted. So fast he felt nauseous. Still he managed to hold onto consciousness as a second figure moved from the shadows to kneel at his side. In its hand it held a small keypad and as one gloved finger touched it, the pain in his head subsided so he was able to think.

He raised his head and then he knew.

"Two-face?"

Bruce had his back to Koriand'r, but he could hear the incredulity in her voice. He nodded as he steepled his fingers and leaned his chin on them. "Yes. I believe so."

"I thought he would have been dead by now."

The skin around the Batman's ice-blue eyes crinkled. "Princess, Harvey and I are the same age."

She tossed her voluminous hair and crossed her arms over her ample chest. "Sorry. It is just..."

He spun in his chair and looked at her. She was standing so the computer monitor cast a soft blue glow over her features and he thought again how truly beautiful she was. Not that he would ever tell her or Dick. He enjoyed their mock combat all too much. "What?"

"You are not like other men." She said plainly.

"No?" he almost laughed. "And what am I then?"

She hesitated, as though paying him a compliment were outside of her nature, "You seem—ageless."

He ran a hand through the hair at his graying temples. "I thought I was an _old_ man," he tossed at her as he spun back to face the board.

Koriand'r pursed her lips. Though they were her words, she had flung them at him in anger. "You are not old. You will ever be young," she remarked enigmatically. "Even when you _are_ dead, old man, I will not be rid of you."

He twisted to look at her, but she had turned away and was staring at the costume of his former partner which stood enshrined in glass.

Clearing his throat, he pressed a button and pointed to the screen as a picture of the man known as Two-face appeared. "The last I knew, Harvey was on the run with Bane after they destroyed the Manor." Another switch brought up a photo of the original Wayne Manor, devastated by his foe's hate. Bruce leaned back and pinched his pursed lips. "In the days that followed, with the war and all, I lost track of him. I have had no word since. I thought him dead, or fallen off the edge of the world— " He turned in the chair and rose. Then he moved towards the alcove where his enhanced costumes hung.

"What makes you think he is behind this?"

"There have been several clues," he said as one of his robot butlers began to carefully extricate him from his street clothes, "first there is the duality of father and son being chosen as victims." He glanced at her and saw her flinch. "Then there was the note. You remember what it said?"

"How could I forget?" She struck her fist into the console, belying the calm exterior she had learned to show. "The words are etched on my soul." She shook herself and moved to his side. Dismissing the robot, she began to help him into his suit. He glanced at her warily, ready to protest, but her deep green eyes, so sad and sober, stopped him. "Go on," she said.

" 'For sale, cheap. One crime-fighter. Slightly-used. Much abused. Going fast. Won't last.' Groups of two. And then," he accepted his cowl from her hand, "the fact that it said— "

"Twenty- _two_ hours instead of twenty-four."

"Yes." He nodded. She was sharp, this one.

"And the other part," she closed one of the fastenings on his shoulder, "about calling _Hell_ and asking for him by name?"

He locked the cowl into place, musing on the irony that he continued to hide behind it when it was no longer necessary. "That has me puzzled. It doesn't sound like Harvey. It would seem to indicate a 'resurrection' of sorts," he glanced at her, "like yours. Of course, if he thought _I_ thought he had died..."

"You don't think Siddig al Ahmuhd has returned..."

"No. He was dead." He frowned as he pulled on his glove, thinking of the madman who had almost ended Dick's life in Ra's hideout in Africa, "But I do think there is something more to this than just Two-face's return."

Bruce finished with his other glove and turned. Nodding his thanks to her, he headed for the stair and the others who were waiting above. "Something more? Bruce... What are you thinking?"

He turned to face her. "I'll let you know when I do, Princess. For now, let's just try to find my son...and yours."

ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

"You want me to _what?_ "

"Kill the bat." Two-face's demented eye flashed as his twisted lips peeled back in a grin. "I can't make it any plainer."

"You must be mad."

The man who had been Harvey Dent glanced at his bizarre companion. Then he began to laugh. He lifted the device he held in his hand and touched the keypad and Dick screamed as his shoulder exploded and he began to bleed.

"Obviously, Grayson. Mad and loving it. Undeniably infuriated _and_ insane. I thought I had rid the world of that black bastard years ago—blew up his house you know, with him in it—and yet now, when I return to Gotham to take my rightful place as its King and begin my dynasty, why—there he is." Two-face stood and moved to the window. The steady breeze lifted the graying hair on his head and ruffled the white shirt collar which brushed his unblemished cheek. "I saw him on the television, rededicating Wayne manor and using it as a hostel for recovering super-punks. It made me burn." He stamped his foot and his fingers tightened on the keypad. "It isn't fair, I tell you!"

"Father..." the Pretender approached Two-face, still holding John in its hands. The baby was squirming and reached for him as they walked past. "Fairest day. Right as rain. It will work out. You'll see."

Two-face struck his hand against the wall and then smiled crookedly. "You are good for my soul, Tomas. Good for my soul." He turned then and touched the Pretender's cheek tenderly. "Yes, yes. You're right. It is just that I had everything planned."  
"New plan now. Better than the old."

There was a moment of silence which made Dick more nervous than all the words that had passed between this curious pair. Abruptly Two-face turned and looked at him. "But we have been remiss. Here we are, family, joined together in one cause, and we keep you from yours." He waved his hand, and as Dick winced, waiting for another explosion, he told his 'child' to, "Let the boy go to him."

Dick watched in disbelief as John's fat feet hit the floor. The baby wobbled a moment and then fell to his knees and began to crawl to him as he had often done before he learned to walk. His bright blue eyes fastened on his father's face and as he reached out, the child fell into his arms and began to wail. He hugged him tight, breathing a prayer that the boy wouldn't have to watch him die. With one eye on his captors, he lifted John up and held him tight.

"How touching."

Dick's eyes closed. Two-face was wily and wise. The madman knew _he_ was one of the few people who could get close enough—and was trusted enough—by Bruce to kill him. He gripped his son tight, knowing it might be the last time. The little boy's heart was beating fast against his own.

"Two-face, I can't— "

The grotesque face contorted with in a maleficent smile as the fingers of his disfigured hand went moved towards the black keys. "Perhaps _this_ will change your mind..."

Dick braced himself, but there was no way he could have prepared himself for what was to come. John stiffened in his arms and shrieked. When he pulled the boy back, a thin trail of blood was running from the child's nose.

ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

TWO

"Mom! Mom, come quick!"

Koriand'r wiped a tear away and laid down the holographic photo-cube she had been viewing. After another night of fruitlessly searching the streets of Gotham and the cities and towns surrounding it, she had ended in the chair by the window, somehow hoping to make a connection with her missing husband. She had been looking at the photos he kept close to hand when she had fallen asleep.

John had been gone a week now. His father, two whole days.

She was not certain she would survive.

The sound of her daughter's voice roused her and she stood, deliberately placing the cube on the stand by the chair. Then she shook her head and straightened her back and remembered who she was. She glanced out the tall window and saw Mar'i winging through the dawn sky towards her.

Another day. Another choice. She would survive. But whoever had done this horrible thing, would not.

As she opened the window and watched her beautiful child fly in, she started to ask her what the matter was. Then she knew. Before Nightstar had a chance to tell her, she _knew_.

They had been found.

Her hand was trembling as it found the wall and she braced herself for the worst. "Are they...?"

"Alive. Mom." Mar'i's smile was wistful. "They're _both_ alive."

Koriand'r felt curiously numb. "Who found them? Where?"

Her daughter eyed her curiously. "Clark and Diana. Grandpa sent us all different directions. He took the old warehouse since Dad had mentioned hearing water the one place he was held. He sent them to an old house down in one of the slums." Nightstar cocked her head. "Mom, are you all right?"

The princess laid her hand on her breast and suddenly fell to her knees.

"Mom?" Her child was beside her in a second.

"X'Hal," the older woman breathed, her tanned skin pale. "Thank God." Tears flooded her great green eyes. "Where are they now?"

The young woman rose. She bit her lip. "At Grandpa's. In the infirmary."

Koriand'r's head snapped up. She found her feet. "The infirmary? Mar'i, why? What...?"

"Dad was in pretty bad shape. He'd been... Well, he's pretty torn up." She watched as the familiar fire returned to her mother's eyes and was strangely comforted. "John had some cuts." Nightstar tossed her long black hair and nodded towards the window. "Grandpa's with them. And Barda."

Koriand'r nodded and without another word, lifted off the ground and flew through the window, heading for the opposite wing of the great house. She couldn't shake the feeling of foreboding that gripped her. Something was wrong. Though the others would have laughed at her, reminding her to be grateful for what she had—it was too easy.

And somehow she knew, not over yet.

ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Bruce was sitting by the bed when she entered, his hands wrapped about his son's. He acknowledged her presence without looking at her and then rose so she could see her husband. He averted his eyes, knowing her grief should be private, but knowing as well the rage that boiled in her—as it did in him—for what they had done. Dick's smooth white skin resembled a battle-field, one laced with landmines that had been indiscriminately set off.

Her heard her gasp and then looked at her when she spoke his name.

"Yes?"

She was trembling. "John?"

He smiled and laid his hand on her shoulder. "He's fine. He's with Barda."

Kory nodded. She understood. The other woman needed healing to. Still she was torn.

"I told him you would there in a few minutes. I thought— " His blue eyes returned to Dick's battered and bruised frame,

"Yes," she whispered. She needed to be with her husband. Sitting on the bed beside him, she gingerly touched his hand. "Where were they? How did you know where to find them?"

Bruce drew in a breath of air and let it out slowly, suddenly aware that he was exhausted. He shifted and leaned his back against the wall. "After you and the others left, I got to thinking. This seems somehow to be about familial connections. Dick and John. Dick and me. I checked the records and made certain I was remembering correctly. Harvey's family owned several buildings in the town, both commercial and private. I assumed," he winced at the word, "that he had taken him to one of the warehouses where it would have been easier to mask whatever he was up to. Also Dick was shot in a warehouse." He glanced at the young man who moaned in his sleep. "But I was wrong. I sent Diana and Clark to his parent's old home. Where he had grown up as a boy. It turned out to be a duplex." He sighed and pressed off the wall. "They were on the floor of an upstairs bedroom. Diana heard the baby crying..."

Her eyes narrowed in anger as her finger traced one of Dick's deeper wounds. "John saw him like _this_?"

Bruce nodded. "Yes," he said softly.

"X'Hal! The bastard." She paused and lifted her blazing eyes to his. "And Two-face?"

He shook his head. "Gone. Nowhere to be found." He watched as the familiar crimson glow began to spread between her fingers. His hand returned to her shoulder. "Princess, there will be time for vengeance. I have the others out hunting for him now." He nodded towards his son. "He's back. John's back. They are both safe. Let that be enough for now."

She gripped her husband's hand. "You know it isn't enough, Bruce. You _know_ that!" She turned to look at him, her mouth a thin line. "And you, of everyone, know this isn't over."

The Batman sighed and ran his hand over his stubbled cheeks. He nodded.

"So long as I live. It will never be over."

oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Later that night Dick awoke to one of the worst headaches he had ever known as well as the touch of a cool cloth on his forehead. He murmured something and shifted. Then he tried to sit bolt-upright in the bed.

A pair of strong hands held him down. "You will not get up, young man."

He blinked several times, trying to focus on the person who was leaning over him. He had thought it was Kory, but the hair was wrong. It was black as midnight. He squinted and then whispered weakly, "Donna?"

The fingers that touched his flesh stiffened. There was a sigh. "Dick, Donna is dead. She has been for several years now. It's Diana." She brushed the sweat-soaked hair from his forehead as she spoke softly to someone behind her, "Go get Koriand'r. Tell her he is awake."

"Dead?" He fell back against the pillows as her face came into focus. Then he saw the gray streak that ran the length of her ebon mane and it all came flooding back—the war, the bomb, his beautiful wife dead and returned, his daughter, his son... He drew a breath like a swimmer emerging from the depths after diving for pearls. "Oh God, Diana, I'm sorry... I forgot..."

She smiled gently and kissed her scarred forehead. "Would that we all could."

Clark appeared behind her and laid a hands on her shoulders. "How are you Dick?"

The younger man blinked again and gripped the side of the bed with his fingers. "A little disoriented. Am I...?"

Diana nodded. "Pain-killers. You were unable to lie still for all the cuts..."

He glanced at his hands, turning them over and over in disbelief and then he started again. "John! Where is John? Is he—?"

"Here."

Dick looked up. His wife had entered the room. John was on her hip. She watched as her husband's blue eyes searched the boy and then smiled wistfully as he seemed to relax. Diana rose and moved out of the way, allowing her to take her place. Koriand'r sat on the bed beside him and turned John towards his father, opening her arms. She frowned when the little boy refused to go.

"Johnny?"

The little boy buried his copper-head against her shoulder and sniffed. A moment later he peeked from beneath his thick bangs at his father, staring at him like he was a stranger.

"What _is_ this?"

"He is afraid."

Kory turned to face Diana. "Of his father? Don't be ridiculous."

Clark took his glasses off and rubbed the bridge of his nose. "Not of him. That he will die." He whispered the last word.

The Tamaranean princess sighed and placed her hands on her son's chubby cheeks. "John, Daddy is fine. He's home. So are you." She glanced at her husband's mentor as he re-entered the room, followed by Nightstar. "Everything is fine now." Her green eyes sought her husband's for assurance, but he was looking away and an ineffable sadness colored his handsome features. "Dick?"

He jumped and turned to face her. "Kory?"

"You _are_ all right, aren't you?"

His pale blue eyes sought his former guardian's face and he sighed. "Sure. Yeah, I'm all right."

oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Later that night Koriand'r crept into the infirmary and slipped between the sheets to lie beside her husband. In his drugged state, it took him a minute or two to realize she was there. Then he smiled sadly as he felt her arms encircle his waist and she kissed the back of his neck. He laid his hand on hers and pressed them tight.

"I have still not forgive you for leaving. Neither has your daughter."

Dick's eyes closed and he moaned. "Kory, I..."  
"...had to be stubborn and noble and self-sacrificing..." The tall woman gripped his fingers. "All the things I love you for. Dick, I was so afraid..."

"How's John?" he whispered hoarsely.

"Fine. Sleeping with Mar'i." Koriand'r waited and then she said softly, "Will you not say you are sorry?"

Her husband drew a deep breath. His head barely shifted from side to side. "I'm sorry I put you through Hell. God, I'm sorry I lied to Mar'i...but I am not sorry I left." A little of the fire that marked him as a man returned to his voice, "I would do it again"

Silence fell between them, lasting a brief moment, then she brushed his hair with her fingers and whispered, "Dick?"

"Mm-hmm..."

"Can you tell me what happened?"

He didn't answer at first. Then in a quiet voice, he said, "I don't know really know. There was a strange creature there...it called itself the Pretender. It was insane."

Kory frowned. "Was that who took you?"

He nodded his head. "You sound surprised."

She cuddled closer, wrapping her knees about his thighs, relishing the feel of him. "I am. Bruce thought... Well, we both thought it was Two-face."  
"Two-face is dead."

She laid her chin on his shoulder. "Bruce doesn't seem to think so. He said no one knows for sure..."

"I know."

His words surprised her. "How? Was he with this 'Pretender'? Dick?" She lifted her head to look into his face, but he had fallen asleep. With a sigh she buried her face against his neck and laid there until the morning sun began to filter through the skylight above his bed.

oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

THREE

Another day had passed. The other superheroes had either gone home or were out hunting for the Pretender, following what few clues Dick had been able to give them. Unfortunately, his memories were sketchy at best. He had been able to describe the Pretender but had told them there seemed to be no reason for its actions. He had never encountered the villain before. The only thing he knew for certain was that it was obviously insane. Koriand'r continued to suspect there was more to it than he was willing to admit. Standing now inside the Manor, watching her husband as he sat on the sun-kissed lawn playing with his son, she could not fail to notice the cloud that continued to hang over him, shadowing everything he did. He had been unusually quiet since his return and intensely introspective. More than once she had caught him watching her when he thought she was unaware and more often than not, there were tears in his eyes. He seemed conflicted and almost detached.

A part of them and yet not.

Turning to the one person who knew him as well as she, she asked "What do you think it is?"

The older man shook his head and sighed. "I don't know." He walked to her side and stared out the window at his son. "But there is one thing I _do_ know."  
"And what is that?"

His blue eyes were keen and they flashed in the late afternoon sun. "He has lied to us."

The tall woman glanced at her husband and then back to the man who stood before her. "Dick? Lied? About what? Why?"

Bruce tossed the book he held in his hand to the floor and erupted in fury. "About everything! About who took him and why. About how he ended up where he was found. About _everything!_ " He met her green eyes. "You know I am right, Princess. You _feel_ it too."

"Yes." She looked at Dick. He was rising from the grass with his son in his arms.

She watched as he pulled him close and seemed to shudder. "But why?"

"He's protecting someone. That has to be it."

Her eyes returned to her husband's foster father and she watched as the fine lines around his eyes deepened in thought. "Who? Not..."

"John? You? Nightstar?" He shook his head. "I don't know. Certainly not himself. He would sacrifice himself in a minute for any one of you."

"Or for you," she said quietly.

The Batman's eyes flicked to her face and away. "My life is all but over. I would give it gladly for him or for your son or...yes, Koriand'r, even for you."

The Tamaranean's eyes narrowed and she turned back towards the window. Dick was nowhere to be seen. "You said once you thought this had something to do with family."

"Yes." He brushed his chin with his fingers. "I still do."

"Two-face hated Dick, didn't he? And you?"  
"Yes. What are you thinking?"  
She shook her head, brushing aside the mountains of madder hair. "Just that somehow it seems we have been diverted." She looked him straight in the eye. "Perhaps neither Dick or John were the real target here."

ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Dick Grayson sat on one of six benches located on the stone terrace attached to the eastern side of the manor. The courtyard was a new edition, not something that had been there when he was a kid—back before the Batman had chosen to spend any time in the light. He had just put John to bed and kissed Kory, promising her he would return in a few minutes. He remained, watching the sun set, knowing before the next day at dawn, time would run out.

Before six in the morning either Bruce or his son would be dead.

He still didn't understand why Two-face and his 'child' had allowed him the precious few hours they had. Perhaps to make the choice all the more poignant. He stood abruptly and rammed his hand into the stone wall behind the bench. The scars that had just begun to heal on it split and spit blood.

Damn them! How could they expect him to make such a choice! How could anyone choose between two people they loved?

"Dick."

He froze. Then he sighed. A moment later he turned to find a tall lean figure silhouetted against by the soft light that spilled from the study. "Bruce. I didn't hear you arrive."  
"Your thoughts were elsewhere." His mentor took a step forward. The cool light of the new moon struck his angular face, highlighting his hawkish features. "Won't you tell me where?"

Dick started to lie again. Then he shook his head. "Bruce, I can't. Don't ask me."

"Son, we want to help— "

"You can't!" The dark-haired man spun on his heels and looked out over the lawn toward Gotham. "You don't understand..."  
"Then make me." Bruce crossed the terrazzo floor and came to stand beside him. "Dick, it isn't easy for me to beg. But I am. I'm begging you—tell me what's wrong."

His son drew a breath. The words were on the tip of his tongue, but he held them there. He knew. Even before they had formed in his mind, he knew the logical progression of events their telling would lead to. Bruce would react in horror. He would forbid him to go anywhere. Then, he would sacrifice himself. He turned and looked into the cool blue eyes and thought about what it would be like to never see them again. Then he thought of his son. It was impossible. He couldn't choose.

He wouldn't.

"I have to go."  
"Go where? Dick...?"

"Kory's waiting," he tossed his head and grinned sheepishly. "We haven't... Well..." One black eyebrow winged towards his bangs. "Tonight's the first night I've felt up to..." He turned brick red. "I didn't mean it that way."

Bruce shook his head. "You'll find I don't shock easily." Then he grinned. "Tell Koriand'r good night. And John."

Dick looked stricken for a moment. Then he smiled. "I'll give him a kiss for you."

" 'Night, son."

"Good night, Bruce." He stepped into the shadows and put his hand on the handle of the French door. Then he turned back. "And Bruce..."

"Yes?"

"I love you."

oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Seventy-two hours later Bruce stood looking at the same face. Its eyes were closed now and its lips pressed into a sort of vapid smile. Dick's pale skin was a shade too dark. His hair too perfect. Even his hands were caked with the thick compound they had been forced to use to conceal the myriad of wounds which had disfigured them the last time he had seen him alive.

Barely alive.

The others had left the room. They had held the services in the Manor. He could hear Mar'i sobbing in the background as Ibn led her out of the ballroom and up the stair. Koriand'r was out on the lawn playing half-heartedly with her son. The little boy didn't understand. Couldn't. He remembered the bright blue eyes looking at his father's corpse and waving. "G'bah, Da-dah," he had whispered.

Good-bye.

He felt fingers press his shoulder and turned to find Diana by his side. "It is never easy," she said, her face stoic, "and it gets no easier."

He nodded. "I thank you for your honesty."  
She reached out and touched Dick's cold hand and shook her head. " I do not know which is harder. Having no body to mourn, or seeing the one you love..." She paused and her voice broke, "... _loved..._ like this."

He shook his head.

Better like this than what he had found in that duplex three days before.

ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

After Dick had left him he had remained in the courtyard. The night was flying fast and he knew sleep would elude him as it had done so many times before. He sat with his chin in his hand, thinking of his former ward and his striking wife in each other's arms, remembering Talia and the few brief moments they had shared which had come as close to love as he had ever known. He was still sitting, in the same position, several hours later when a tousled and sleepy-eyed Koriand'r appeared in the study door, yawning.

"Dick?" she called as she stepped onto the stones.

He stood up, immediately alert. "No, Princess. It's Bruce. Isn't Dick with you?"  
She shook her head as she approached. "He came back to the room. John was crying. He sat with him a while and then said he was coming to find you. That he had something to ask you. I must have fallen asleep. He isn't—?" She stopped short, suddenly terrified. "X'Hal, Bruce, where is he?"

"Did you check on John?"

She nodded. "He's in his bed." She stifled a yawn and blinked, clearing sleep from her eyes. "Funny thing, he had a nose-bleed. That's never happened before. Dick was very upset."

The man before her gasped, "A nosebleed?"

"Yes..."

"Out of nowhere?"

Kory sighed and ran a hand along her neck. "Yes."

The older man struck his fist into his hand. "That's it! How could I have been so blind...?"

"Bruce, what?"

Her father-in-law groaned. "God, no. No, God, no. Not for me..."

"Bruce, what is it?"

He shook his head. "Put on your costume. We need to get to that house."

She started to do as he said and then swung back, "I will have to find someone to watch John. Nightstar isn't— "

"The 'bots can do it."

She shook her head. "No. I will not put him at risk..."

"He's in no danger here. I'm not certain now he ever was."

"What? I need an explanation, old man."

"Its me." He sighed and ran a hand through his hair. "It's been me all along."

oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Twenty minutes later they arrived at the house in the dilapidated neighborhood, just as the rising sun peeped over the horizon. They landed on the roof. The Batman glanced at the woman at his side and drew a breath. He _knew_ she wouldn't listen. Still he had to try. "Princess. Koriand'r. I think you should wait while I go inside."

Her heart-shaped face turned towards him, the jaw set. "This is _my_ husband. I will not cower out here while you rush in to save him."

The words formed, but he couldn't speak them. _Couldn't_ tell her. Couldn't admit he was afraid. If he had not been who he was, _he_ would not have had the courage to face what he feared was inside. "At least let me go in first."

"Why? Bruce, what is it you fear?"

He turned his face toward the sun and shuddered as its warm rays caressed his cold cheeks. What was it he feared? "Only what I have always feared..." he whispered.

That death had won.

They found him in the middle of the floor in the upstairs room that held the crib. Koriand'r had shrieked as her feet touched the carpet and fallen to her knees by his side. Had it not been for the costume and the raven hair, they might not have recognized him for all the blood.

"Bruce?"

He turned towards her and whispered, "Diana, you asked me a while back if I believed in God."

She stepped away from the coffin and looked at him. The light that poured in the window showed an old man, bent and broken by pain. "Yes, I remember," she said cautiously, "so...?"

"If there is a god," his lips curled in anger and his fingers formed a ball, "then he or she is cruel and capricious and allows innocents to pay for the sins of the guilty."

"Bruce..." her voice was hushed, "you should not say such things..."

He shook his head and touched his son's cold face and shuddered. "Don't worry. Diana. I won't be punished.

"There is no god."


	3. Chapter 3

PART THREE – ONE

He opened his eyes on a world gone mad. All about him a kaleidoscope of colors whirled and danced filling the small hot space. He couldn't get his bearings. Couldn't even manage to sit up. Closing his eyes, he sought his center and tried to remember the things Bruce had taught him. Even in the worst of circumstances, there was always a way out—a way to survive. He counted slowly to ten and then stretched out his arms and legs and was surprised when he didn't bump into anything. Maybe the room wasn't as tiny as he thought... Still, the lights were disorienting. He tried to stand. Instead he stumbled and fell. Resting on his hands and knees, he drew several ragged breaths and tried to remember how he had gotten where he was. He had left Kory sleeping and returned to the duplex where he had found John to confront Two-face and the Pretender and had—

Dear God, John! He didn't have to check the chronometer built into his suit. The deadline had passed and Bruce was still alive. That meant John... Laying his head on his hands, he began to weep silently. John. By all that was holy, John...

"Wakey-wakey."

He knew the voice. Pulling himself together, he lifted his head slowly and glanced about. Shadows shifted in every corner of the room, but he couldn't tell if it was the crazy lights of if someone stood there watching. "Pretender?"

The lean figure slid out of one of the patches of darkness to come to his side. In its hand was the remote which activated the metal demons in his blood. "Mustn't move."

"Why?"

"Need you here."

He glanced at the creature, frowning at the face, half-white, half tanned skin. "Can I sit up?"

One of the Pretender's brows lifted in amusement and it said quite clearly, "I don't know— _can_ you?"

Dick closed his eyes and sighed. It was playing child's games. He licked his lips. " _May_ I?"

The Pretender laughed and ran a hand through its yellow-green hair so it stood up like soldiers on review. "Yes. You may."

Dick lifted his hands from the floor and tipped back into a seated position. Then he faced his foe. It was the first time he had had a chance to really studythe curious creature. It _did_ look like Harvey, but there was something else there as well. _Someone_ else... "Who are you?" he asked quietly.

The lean figure pointed its nose toward the ceiling and pronounced dramatically, "I am the Pretender..."

"The _pretender_ to what? To some throne?" Dick tried to keep how exasperated he felt from showing in his voice.

It's head tilted and its eyes—one blue and one green—fastened on him. "Smart boy. You get a lollipop." It's long fingers hovered over the control pad and twitched with expectation as he flinched. A moment later, it moved them away.

Encouraged he tried another question. "Why do you call Two-Face, 'Father'?"

It's crooked face split with a grin. "He made me. Like he made you. Now he is your father too." Then it laughed. " _Two_."

" _Made_ me?"

"So, Grayson, I see you are awake. I've brought you a present."

Dick looked up suddenly. The movement made him gag. Concentrating on the creature before him, he had forgotten the lights. "A better present would be to turn that kaleidoscope off."

"Glad to oblige."

A moment later the whirling lights vanished, their absence leaving him almost as disoriented as their presence. Then they were replaced by a news broadcast which filled the four blank walls of his cell. He frowned as a reporter stepped aside and the cameraman zoomed in on an elegant casket being lowered into the ground. Beside the open grave were two women, one slight and dark, the other broad-boned and madder-haired. In the arms of the red-head there was a small child. He gasped and rose to his feet and fell with his fingers against one of the walls. John was alive. But who was in the grave? He spun about and managed to stay on his feet as he shouted, "What have you done? Is it Bruce? I swear I will kill you where you stand if— " Then he stopped as the sad figure of his mentor and friend moved into the frame. Bruce dropped a handful of earth on the coffin and then walked away as the reporter began to outline the career of the late Dick Grayson, once known as Red Robin and after that, as Nightwing to a grieving world.

"I didn't touch a precious hair on your one time guardian's head, but I have killed him. Look at him," Two-face snarled, almost dancing with triumph, 'old and gray, bent with grief." He turned and looked at Dick and his twisted face seemed to writhe with a sick joy. "Just imagine what it will do to him when I kill you again!"

oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Now it all made sense. In the years since he had destroyed Wayne Manor and fled the city and the States, Two-face had been working to perfect a technique of creating clones and transplanting memories into them, hoping to restore himself to what he once had been—to recreate Harvey Dent, whole and undamaged. The grinning gargoyle that watched him must have been one of his experiments he chose to allow to live. While it was obvious Harvey's DNA was involved in the creation of the Pretender, there was something else there. Its body was long and lean—not stocky like Dent. And it had an almost feminine grace. Still, with its disfigured visage—something Harvey had to have subconsciously chosen to recreate—and twisted mind, it was the perfect child for his demented alter-ego.

Dick sighed and shifted so his hands encircled his knees. Apparently in the midst of his quest, it had dawned on Harvey that he would be able to reproduce people other than himself. He couldn't yet transfer memories—that was why he remained in the form God had given him that had been warped and damaged by fate—but he could plant dead bodies at strategic places—like he had his—or send duplicates in as victims of amnesia or mind-wiping. In this way he had planned to take over key positions in the government, to steal vast fortunes and to generally wreck havoc on the world that had betrayed him—until the day he had seen that news broadcast and realized his old enemy had survived both the destruction of the Manor and the holocaust that followed. From that moment on, it seemed, he had begun to plot Bruce's death, and when he had heard the rumors which had flown through the criminal grape-vine of Koriand'r's return and Dick's own death and resurrection, he had begun to plot the ruin of the man who had ruined him. He meant to take from him what mattered most, and do it not once, but twice. Like Bane, he would break the Batman, but he wouldn't bother with his already weak and aging body—

He would break his soul.

Dick glanced at the Pretender. The creature sat across the room playing with the crazy-quilt teddy bear, showing it the keypad that controlled the invisible bugs which infested both him and his son. He frowned. The name still bothered him. The _pretender_ to what? Harvey's empire? He didn't really have one. Closing his eyes, he sighed and ran his fingers through his black hair. At least John was safe and away from here. By now Bruce had probably figured out that he was infected and would have done all he could to remove the nannites from his body. Or to make them inert. The fact that the child was at the funeral... _his_ funeral seemed to support that.

Dear God, he hoped there was a way to make them inert.

He opened his eyes and realized his jailer was watching him. Its eyes shone with a demented light and it smiled while waving the little black box. He waved back. God, he had to get out of here. It wasn't just that he feared for his life—if it would have saved anyone else, he would have given it gladly—but at this point he knew his death would do more harm than good. Bruce had buried him once. That had probably about killed him.

If he had to do it again...

"So what do you get out of this?" he asked suddenly.

The creature cocked its head. "What?"

"You? What do _you_ get out of this?"

Its eyes narrowed and its thin finger's arched. "No tricks."

He held his hands up, palms open. "No tricks. Two-face kills me again. Bruce cracks. Old half-and-half is happy." He paused for effect. "What's in it for you?"

"For me?"

"For you. What do you get?"

The twisted mouth crooked into a smile. "Plenty."

"Plenty?" He shrugged. "What exactly? You get to watch?"

The tall rangy creature rose and crossed to where he sat, towering over him. It fixed him with both eyes, blue and green. It's scarlet lips pulled back to reveal pearl white teeth. "I get to own what cannot die. And what in dying destroys him."

Dick frowned. Those were full sentences, not the sing-song garbage it had spoken before. Was it's simplicity another pretense? "Own what can't die? What is that?"

The creature bent at the middle to whisper in his ear. "You."

oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

TWO

Koriand'r stood at the foot of the grave, a bunch of wildflowers in her hand. It had been two days. Two days. It might have been two years. Or two thousand. She knelt and lay the blossoms in the dirt. There was no headstone yet. She could not bring herself to write the words in stone. Somehow that would make the loss too final.

Too eternal.

Rocking back on her heels, she closed her eyes and balled her hands into fists. She sat silently a moment and then she lifted them into the air and screamed. This was not right. Someone, somewhere had made a cosmic mistake. Dick was to have grown old at her side. They were to have watched their children mature and blossom and marry and have children of their own. Winter would have come into his hair again and soft lines tempered his beautiful face, adding character to perfection. That had been taken from her once before while she slept in the Batman's hidden lab and he grew old without her.

And so it had been again. And this time, forever.

She stood and dropped her cloak to the ground, revealing her hero's costume. Then, with a burst of crimson energy, she shot into the sky not knowing where she was going, only that she had to fly from the silent earth and the still cold body beneath.

oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Diana was worried about Bruce. She had spoken with Clark and insisted he return to the Manor, even though it meant taking time away from his projects in Kansas. He sat now in the study with his old friend, staring at him over the rim of a cup of hot chocolate.

"Bruce. You will survive."

The Batman was silent a moment, then he said, "Maybe I don't want to."

Clark sat back. His fingers traced the rim of the mug. "I never thought I would hear you say that."

'I never thought I would bury Dick."

"You've lost others before. Your parents. Dear friends." As the field in Kansas flashed in his mind with its burnt and broken bones, he rested the cup on his knee and sighed. "Jason..."

"This is different."

"How?" At his friend's angry look, he raised his hand. "Don't get me wrong, Bruce. Dick's...loss is devastating. So was Lois's. _Any_ death diminishes us, but we can't give up."

"I can." Bruce put his cup down. "I have. I've lost and there just isn't any fight left in me anymore." He stood and walked slowly to the French doors, staring at the spot where he had last seen his son alive and vital.

Clark's brows met in a 'v' and he coughed, not quite believing what he was about to say. "But don't you want revenge?"

Bruce was silent a moment and then he laughed. "Trying to rouse me, old friend?" I know what that cost you." As Clark looked away, he continued, "I sought revenge when Jason died. It didn't help. I was just as empty as before. Perhaps even more." He glanced at the other man. "How do you hold a madman accountable? Perhaps the one who should be held accountable, is the one who _drove_ him mad in the first place..."

Clark stood and reached for him. "Bruce, you can't be blaming yourself. You shouldn't— "

" _Why_ shouldn't I?" The gray-haired man lashed out suddenly, "Why not? _I_ created the Joker. I _created_ Two-face. Without me, they would not have existed. Without the Batman there would have been no reason for Jason Todd or...Dick Grayson to die." He stood toe to toe with his old friend and fixed him with his tortured blue eyes. "Either death or god has had the last laugh."

Clark backed away, truly troubled for his friend. "And how is that?"

"I'm still here."

oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Koriand'r found herself flying over the area where they had found her husband's ravaged body. She had not been able to get the image out of her mind and she was not content as his mentor seemed to be to brood and wallow in self-pity. Though Dick would not have approved, she intended to hunt Two-face and this Pretender down and to make them pay. She had left Mar'i to watch John, telling the young woman that she needed a day for a Tamaranean mourning ritual. Her vocal daughter had protested loudly. It was all Ibn had been able to do to keep her from burning down half of Gotham looking for her father's killers and, after the funeral, the girl was ready to go back to the chase. Partly because of that—and her own need to know that, at least, Dick's children were safe—she had made her promise she would stay with her brother and guard him close. It had been cruel, but she had counted on Mari's guilt to hold her to that promise. The slender dark-haired woman had not forgiven herself for letting her father escape the first time. Nor had she spoken to him before he had gone to his grave.

Twisting in a spiral as she flew, relishing the last rays of the setting sun, she sighed and thought of how her time upon the Earth had changed her. Not only had she manipulated the girl but she had lied to her as well: there was no such thing as a mourning ritual on her home world. As she spied the duplex she hunted below and pointed her feet towards it in preparation for her descent, a grim smile lit her face. Or perhaps there was. Perhaps a Tamaranean's way of mourning a murdered loved one _was_ to seek revenge.

She alighted just without the house and as the local vagabonds and street thugs scrambled, she placed her fists on her hips and stared at the small window to the back of the second floor. Behind her the sun gave its death-gasp and set in blood. From the beginning there had been something not quite right about all of this. From Dick's shooting to his return and death, it seemed a calculated madness had marked each and every twist and turn: a madness far different from that which had marked the crimes of a certain crazed individual known as Two-face. She had spent the wee hours of the morning pouring over the Batman's files and had come away more confused than enlightened. Yes, he and Dick had a history, and yes, he hated the Batman—but they had been friends once, and when push came to shove, more often than not Harvey Dent had found a way to prevent his alter ego from destroying the other man. And Two-face was a brute, as was evidenced by his beating of the young Robin while he was still a child. A brute and a bully. There was something about this entire affair that was far too clever for it to have been born in his depths of his divided brain.

Far too depraved.

She had told herself on the way to the duplex that if she was very brave and was able to face the image that haunted her—if she could go back into the room where they had found him and began again, the answer just might present itself.

If...

With a sigh she lifted into the air and flew towards the window, banishing the wife and becoming once again, the warrior.

oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Across the street in an abandoned warehouse, Dick Grayson lay with his eyes half-closed watching his jailer. There was something about the way the creature moved. Something familiar. He thought too about its words. About the fact that it said he couldn't die. Or maybe it meant, he _wouldn't_ die. He frowned and watched as it tossed its head from one side to the other and then turned his way.

Dick feigned sleep. He could hear Two-face just beyond a wall of boxes, preparing a mini-van to transport him away from here. It seemed they were ready to make their move. He was already bound and gagged. From what he had been able to overhear, they intended to take him to the cemetery and to leave him on his own grave, and then to wait until Bruce or Kory or someone showed. Then they would blow every bug in his system once and for all, leaving him a bloody mass and the Batman— and anyone else who happened to care— hopelessly dispirited and insane.

At least that was the plan.

He had to get away before it happened.

He shifted and watched the tall lean creature as it rocked back and forth talking to itself. It was fiddling with the control device again. Suddenly their eyes locked and it grinned. It had grinned before, but never in this way. Never with the same knowledge or absolute delight. Just as he was about to place whatever it was he found about it that was so frustratingly familiar, its finger came down on one of the keys. He sucked in air and waited, but nothing happened. Not to him. Then he heard a sharp intake of breath behind him and a half-voiced curse. A moment later several cardboard boxes tumbled over him. Something had fallen against them. Something or someone.

The Pretender rose and came to stand over him, cocking its head. It pursed its lips. "Poor Harvey," it muttered, "what a fool." Then it turned into the light. The setting sun struck the creature before him, casting its profile into silhouette.

Dick gasped.

They had all got it wrong.

oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

"Bruce?"

The older man didn't stir. He was sitting in a chair before the fire with an old-fashioned photo album on his knees. A glass of whiskey sat untouched beside him. Diana knelt before him and laid her hand on one of his.

"Bruce. You must choose to live. You cannot give up."

He refused to look at her. His index finger was between his teeth and he was staring at the fire, a single tear running down his cheek.

"Do you not see? This is a gift. A gift for you."

That made his eyes move. They flicked to her face. The thought behind them was not kind.

Diana tossed her head and laid her other hand on his knee. "Dick was prepared. He had made his peace. So had Donna and the others." She met his cold blue eyes. " _You_ are in turmoil. _You_ are lost. You cannot rest until you do the same."

He laughed. It was a bitter sound. "So God has let me suffer because He loves me?" He shook her off. "Get real, Diana."  
"You get real, _old_ man." She stood and placed her hands on her hips. "Is this what Dick would want, you wallowing in self-pity? Condemning yourself to death _in_ life?" Her eyes narrowed to slits. "Allowing your enemy—and his killer—to win?"

He shook his head. "Leave me alone."

She planted her feet firmly in the plush Chinese carpet and refused to move. "No. I will not. You will hear the truth no matter how bitter a pill it is to swallow. You have _allowed_ death to win. It is not his game, it is yours and you have conceded."

"I've what?" He lifted his eyes and stared at her, some of his old fire returning

You're a damned fool, Diana."

"You are the one who is damned. _And_ you are not the man I thought you were."

"Diana..."

"Coward."  
He stood then and faced her, much as he had in the skies over the battlefield of

Kansas. "I am not a coward. I am a realist. I should have recognized it from

the very first, from the moment my father's head hit the pavement and my mother's blood sprayed into my face. It is all a lie. It has _all_ been a lie. My life, everything I have fought for. The game is rigged. No one can win."

Her nostrils flared. She licked her lips and then she said, "You are right."

Her quiet words shocked him. "What? I'm right? I thought I was a coward."

Her sky-blue eyes lit with a deep irony. "I do not take it back. But you are right, no _one_ can win. Not alone."

"Eh?"

"You said you didn't know if you believed in God. Have you ever sought divine help? Bruce, have you ever given the divine permission to enter in?"

"What is this..."  
"Are you brave enough to do so now?"

He met her eyes at first, his own wearing the look that brought hardened criminals to

their knees and sent them away blubbering like babies. Then a tremor ran the length of his frame and he lowered his head.

"Your childhood gods died in Crime Alley, Bruce. Perhaps it is time you acknowledged that and grew up."

oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Sometime later Clark returned and went looking for his wife. He had just walked past the study when something stopped him: a quiet sound, like a whisper on the wind. He knew if it had been voices, he would have heard them from a mile away. He lifted his glasses and rubbed his eyes and then turned back and placed his foot on the threshold. Then he stopped, stunned. Diana knelt before the fire, her hands linked with his old friend's. Her eyes were closed and her lips moving as he had seen many times before in prayer.

Bruce was on his knees as well. Silent. His lips still.

But he was listening.

oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

THREE

Koriand'r crossed her wrists and raised her eyes to the darkening sky. "X'Hal,' she breathed, "let me find his killer and make them pay." She turned back from the window and stared at the tattered rug on the floor, stained with her husband's blood. Kneeling she ran her hands along its surface, lost in thought. It bothered her still the way they had found him and what they had had to do to identify him. His body had been savaged almost beyond recognition. She remembered, afterwards, looking at the reconstructed corpse in the coffin and thinking it _wasn't_ him. Bruce had assured her that it was. There were tests, he said. Structural DNA couldn't lie. But in that way that a lover knows, she had still doubted. She knew she should have _felt_ him die. And she had not.

The tall Tamaranean stood and placed her hands on her hips, once again surveying the room. Where to begin? Just at that moment a car back-fired and a half-dozen raucous voices cut into the still night air causing her to jump. A radio blared, accosting her ears with some dreadful strain of acid-rock, and a girl screamed in delight as a dilapidated auto rattled off into the night. Koriand'r laughed and placed her hand to her heart, amazed that such a simple thing could frighten her. She walked to the window as another vehicle, a wildly colored mini-van, sped off into the night, careening wildly from one side of the road to the other. She shook her head and muttered something disparaging about teenagers. Then without a backwards glance, she left the death-scene and headed for the spiral stair.

Once on the lower floor she began a thorough investigation of every room. She rummaged through the drawers and emptied all the closets. A half an hour later it was obvious to her that Dick's captors had not been living here, but had only used the room upstairs for their vile purposes. She had been just about to leave when she remembered she hadn't taken a look at the basement. As she drew near the door she noticed it was ajar and that the dust on the threshold had been disturbed as if something of a substantial size had been drug across it recently. Several painful heartbeats later she stood in the center of a small lightless room, staring at the curious remnants of its recent occupation: a projector, a patch-work teddy bear, and a small metal toy much like the ones they had found burned and melted in the warehouse where all of this had begun.

In the warehouse.

Koriand'r sucked in air and spun about. Lifting into the air, she flew up the stairs and out of the door, and landed in the middle of the street. The mini-van was nowhere in sight, but across the street from Two-face's childhood home was the place that had spit it out. The placard above the open garage door read, 'Gemini Enterprises.'

Gemini. The sign of the twin.

Using caution, she entered the silent building, all too aware that someone might be laying in wait for her. She powered up her hands and let the crimson light that fell from them illuminate her way. It first caressed a pile of fallen boxes. And then the body underneath.

She didn't know why the sight of it chilled her. Dick was already dead.

Wasn't he?  
Moving with stealth, she crossed the grease-stained floor until she towered over the half-concealed, broken and bleeding form. As she knelt, she placed her hand on its shoulder and rolled it over. A familiar grotesque visage greeted her, the ancient wounds she had seen on the Batman's monitor overrun with new ones, only minutes old.

It was Two-face.

oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

The Pretender was singing a little ditty and dancing while driving with its hands in the air. Dick winced as they hit another bump in the road and his head came down on the wheel-well. He had no idea where they were going. Now that he knew who he was dealing with—well, in a way—he also knew that anything was possible. What had Harvey been thinking? The two of them had been almost as mortal of enemies as he and the Batman.

Perhaps it had been their hatred that had drawn them together in this bizarre fashion. But then the very fact that the Pretender existed seemed to indicate some prior connection. The other had been dead, what? Fifteen years? Maybe more.

Suddenly the mini-van screeched to halt and he was thrown headlong against the back of the seat. In his weakened state, it knocked the wind out of him and his head was still spinning when the hatch was thrown open and two hands—one gloved, the other naked—gripped his collar and pulled him to the ground.

For some time after that he was dragged by his feet over the rough earth. Branches and dead leaves clung to his costume, filled his mouth and decorated his hair. When at last they stopped and he was released, he opened his eyes and was shocked to find they were on Bruce's land, in the cemetery that lay a mile or so beyond the manor: the cemetery where Bruce's parents and Jason, as well as his own cloned self, were buried. He had thought that with Two-face dead, the Pretender's intention would have been to keep him alive—either to torture or as a sort of 'prize'. Warily lifting his head, he gazed at the lean creature. It had something in its hand that flashed as it lifted it past the lantern it had placed on a nearby stone. It plunged to the earth and then flew into the air over the saffron hair again and again. When his captor noticed he was watching, its gloved hand moved lightning fast and a shining steel blade struck the earth centimeters before his nose. A moment later the tool was raised again and the Pretender drove it into the earth over Jason's grave.

Dick frowned. "What are you doing? You can't— "

Blackness exploded as the flat side of the shovel slammed into his head and he saw no more.

"Sleep-a-bye, little Robin," the Pretender whispered. Then it returned the blade to the earth and jumped on it, while keeping its mismatched eyes focused on the marker bearing Jason's name.

"Forever."

oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Bruce had left the Manor and was walking by himself through the still night, his steps, as ever, leading him to his parent's grave. He stopped though before he reached the gate to consider Diana's parting words, remembering the promise he had made her that he would choose life, and that he would try to prove as good a surrogate father to Dick's children as he had been to the man himself.

Still his dark and brooding nature drew him like a magnet to the cold stone and freshly turned earth. A single rose was clenched between his fingers and he pressed it tight so the thorns cut into his flesh and made it bleed. He hesitated, resting his hand on one of the rough iron posts and turned his weary eyes to the sky, as if waiting for a sign—as if to dare the divine, as his friend had put it, to make its presence known.

Without warning a scarlet comet shot across the black void. Bruce started and the rose fell to the ground. He staggered back, disbelieving, and then he began to laugh. It was only another lost soul come to call on the dead. Nightstar had complained to him earlier that her mother had disappeared, leaving her holding the proverbial baby _and_ the bath-water. It seemed, now, that the wandering Tamaranean had returned.

As he watched the trail that marked her descent drop towards the stone-dotted landscape beyond, his keen eyes noticed the park gate was askew. He should have noticed it earlier—would have, had he not been preoccupied. He crossed to it and bent to touch the earth. It was warm, and there were fresh tire tracks laid across those the hearse had left the day before.

Later, he couldn't find words to describe the feelings that crashed over him at that moment in an emotional tidal wave. He had wanted to scream, to laugh and to cry all at once and had had absolutely no idea what it meant. He had stared at the tire tracks and felt almost giddy. Then his mind had turned to logic: a homeless person had wandered in, seeking shelter for the night, or perhaps a thief had thought to find something of value on his son's grave. But neither of those scenarios accounted for the car or the gate being ajar. Clasping the heavy metal with his fingers, he flung it wide and began to run. He was on the far side of a lot of seventeen acres set aside for the Wayne Family Memorial Park and knew it would take him a full ten minutes to reach the other side on foot. He felt his jacket as he picked up his pace. The unit for controlling the Bat-bots was in the house. Mar'i was asleep and Clark and Diana had gone home.

There was no one but him and Dick's wife, out there, somewhere, alone in the dark.

Not knowing how, as he continued to gain momentum, he began to pray.

oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Koriand'r landed near the patch of land that held her husband's grave and immediately dropped into a protective position. Someone was in the cemetery and they were singing. She frowned and slipped behind a gravestone capped by a weeping angel to listen. The tune was jaunty. Almost jolly. And terribly off-key. She waited a moment and then crept forward, passing Bruce's parents' tomb, heading for the area she had wept over the day before. Pausing just behind the marker her father-in-law had erected in memory of his butler, she raised her eyes above it, only to have to duck as a load of dirt and stones came flying towards her head. She cursed briefly and bit her lip and then peered around the side instead. A lantern perched precariously on a nearby stone revealed a haphazardly-costumed gravedigger merrily shoving a silver spade into the ground.

Just behind the figure, she could see the withering flowers left from Dick's funeral.

Warily, she moved from behind the marker to the next largest stone, careful not to make a noise or remain in the open for more than a second. Whoever it was singing, they seemed oblivious and the tune continued uninterrupted. She knew it now. It was called 'I'm a Little Teapot.' Mar'i had had to learn it in pre-school. But the words were not the same. Gripping the foot of a stone woman in mourning, she waited as the song ended and then began again. And when it did, it made her blood run cold.

"I am the Pretender, lean and tall. Here lie my victims, here lie they all. When I lock the coffin, here them shout!" The figure merrily tossed another shovel full of dirt over its shoulder and altered its voice so it became a whimpering cry, "I'm still alive! Please let me out!"

Kory squeezed her broad shoulders between two headstones as the strange workman went into a gale of laughter and rose up on her knees, glancing through the center of a stone wreath held by a playful cherub. Then she flung her hands over her mouth. By X'Hal and all that was holy, had they dug him up? Her heart leapt into her throat and she felt sick. A moment later she realized her mistake. Dick _was_ lying on the ground, but his hands and feet were bound and he was in costume. And as she watched, his moved his head and groaned. She glanced at the grave he lay on. It was unmolested.

She had been right. It _hadn't_ been her husband they had buried.

Dick was alive.

ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Bruce had lost sight of the red fire that marked the Princess's position. He was certain she had landed in the cemetery, but he had no idea where. If what he suspected had actually happened, then she was in danger. As he paused to catch his breath, he thought of the sacred trust his son had left him. If his last years counted for nothing else, he would use them to see that Dick's family was kept safe, and that included the tall, strong-willed, overly impetuous tempestuous Koriand'r of Tamaran.

Even if she told him where he could put it.

He began to run again, drawing the crisp cold air into his lungs, and as he did, he actually smiled. More than four decades had passed since he had tossed the cards on the table and declared Death the winner.

No more.

oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

The singer continued to hum its macabre ditty. Sometimes the words varied, but the intent was always the same. She realized now that whoever it was, they were digging into the earth which held Jason Todd's coffin. She shuddered as a chill snaked down her spine. The boy had been in the ground over twenty years. What could they possibly want...?

And then she knew. She gazed at her husband lying bound and bleeding on the cold uncaring ground and she knew.

He had come here to finish the job begun all those years ago.

To kill Robin and lay him in the grave.

"I know you are there, my dear."  
Koriand'r's started. She drew a breath and held it and tried to melt into the shadows. She had been hoping to move up behind them, unseen. It was killing her that Dick was there and she couldn't touch him, talk to him or hold him.

"I thought I saw an omen earlier up on high, like a fire in the sky," the lean creature pivoted towards her, leaning its chin on the handle of the shovel which it had thrust into the upturned earth. "By and by, I realized it was a fire-fly. A _Star_ -fire-fly."

She hesitated, wondering if they were sure or only guessing. Then as she watched, the gravedigger shifted the shovel and turned it so the sharp blade rested on Dick's spinal column near the base of his neck. A booted foot settled on the muddy edge.

"Come out, come out, wherever you are." The figure shook its head and its saffron hair waved like neon wheat. "If you don't I may get so angry that I lose my head." It paused and leaned on the shovel, digging the blade into Dick's flesh. "Or your husband may lose his."

The Tamaranean swallowed hard, then she stood and raising her hands before her, stepped into the light. She stared the creature before her. It had to be him. But something was different. Something was not quite right... As the figure shifted so the lantern-light struck its long angular face, she frowned.

"Not who you were expecting, my dear?" Dick's captor leaned down and locked its fingers in his hair, hauling back on the unconscious man's head. The white-gloved hand twisted it at an odd angle and then two disparate eyes locked on her face. "Hello from Hell, Princess."

She shook her head, her eyes on her husband's face. From the way his neck was bent, it could be snapped in a second. "You belong in Hell," she whispered as she fought to keep the fire from her fingers, "but you haven't come from there. I thought you were the Joker. But you're not. You couldn't be."

The demented creature pouted and for a moment, it seemed as if it might cry.

Then it lifted its head and turned so the twisted golden half of its face was toward her. "Then I must be Two-face."

Koriand'r swallowed hard. Her full lips curled with distaste. "X'Hal...you're both."

"And neither."

The tall woman jumped and a small cry escaped her. She reached out as the creature jerked Dick's head back and then let it fall to the ground. Within seconds, it was on its feet. Bruce had appeared, as was his habit, out of the dark night without a sound.

"Who's idea was this," he growled as he stepped on what they had believed to be his son's grave, "this transgression against nature? Was it Harvey's? Or something born and nursed in your original's warped and demented mind?" The thin creature stepped back so the light illumined it fully, revealing the curious pairing of a finely tailored suit with the undisciplined outfit of a circus clown. Bruce refused to show any reaction to what appeared to be the amalgam of two of his most horrific foes. "Well, Pretender?"

"It was ours." Its chalk-white face eclipsed the lantern like a crescent moon. "Ah, dear Batman, heart of our heart, blood of our blood. We always knew one day you would win. Do you think we went to our grave unprepared? The process was in place, all it took was someone willing to be used..."

"Harvey," Bruce's voice was heavy, "in his search of his impossible cure..."

"The deal was made long ago, when we were still strong and whole—just after this one," it kicked Dick in the back, 'appeared again. He knew where and what. And when the time came, in return for our helping him, he was bound to recreate me. Of course, we never told him the secret..."

"The secret?" Koriand'r's eyes were on her husband. If the Pretender had not been so near.

It turned its blazing eyes on her. "Kill us. Kill him."

"Kory."  
She glanced at Dick's foster father.

"Power down." Then he turned to the Pretender. "Go on. I'm listening."

The gloved hand went to the cheek that was hidden in shadow, "Harvey did not fail

us, did not try to cheat, but he could not leave well enough alone. The coin was tossed and I was born, as you see me now. Part of him, part of me and deliberately _de_ -formed and _de_ -arranged." One rail-thin leg lifted as it laughed and planted its jester's boot on Dick's chest. "After a certain time I came to understand the artistry. Poor sensitive Harvey. It's part of why we had to kill him."

Bruce's jaw tightened. He glanced at Dick's wife and she nodded. "It's true." Koriand'r watched the older man closely, understanding in part what he was trying to do. He knew this creature—whom he had just met—probably better than anyone in the world. But it was killing her. If this Pretender touched Dick one more time...

"What are you doing with Jason's grave?"

"Jason?" The mouth turned down in a frown. "There is no Jason. There was no Tim. You made them up to confuse me." It grasped Dick's hair again. "There is only this one. There had always only been this one. When I pull the coffin up, it will be empty. But not for long. I am going to put him inside." Its blue eye winked. "Then he will be dead for sure." The Pretender held Bruce's eyes, shaking its head sadly, "I am afraid you will have to hold another funeral."

Bruce drew a breath and held it. He had thought he might be able to talk it into

releasing Dick. After all, _he_ had been the target. But apparently he had only been the target of Harvey's madness. This creature, this pseudo-Joker—the _pretender_ to the Clown Prince of Crime—was fixated on his ward. For a moment, he was at a loss. Then he saw Dick's eyelids flutter. His own ice-blue eyes flicked to Koriand'r and back to her husband. She nodded. She had seen.

The Pretender had produced the small black keypad with which it controlled the micro-creatures in his son's blood. So he meant to kill him after all. He shifted on his feet. "Another?"

It pointed at the earth just turned from Jason's grave, "There is no body here. We would know. We killed him but he wouldn't stay dead. Two-face wanted to kill him—to destroy you." The Pretender rammed his heel into Dick's chest again and again, punctuating its words, "But...I...have...al...ready...done...that!"

"You _will_ stop now!" Koriand'r couldn't stand it. The aura around her was pulsing and her hands had began to seep crimson fire. She took a step forward. "Don't touch him! Leave him alone!"

"Or what?" The Pretender lifted the keypad and held it before its' face. One finger danced on over the small square buttons. "Or what?" it whispered with menace as a morbid smile touched its twisted lips. "One touch...just one, and your son and your precious husband go 'boom'," it tilted its' head and made a gurgling noise, "aaggghhhhh... _splat_."

She sought Bruce's face and saw him slowly nod his head.

Koriand'r closed her eyes. So, it had come to this. She knew what he had told her, but now she had to trust. She had to trust the old man with her husband and her son, two of the most precious things in her world. When she looked at him again his eyes spoke volumes, seeking to bridge the gulf of guilt and shame and regret created by the last ten days.

Her jaw tightened. She squared off before the Pretender and said softly, "Go ahead."

The creature frowned, one white finger dangling above the keypad. "What?"

She drew a deep breath and raised her hands, pointing them at its head. "Go ahead, you bastard. Push it! Give me a reason."

"Koriand'r. No."

"Kory, no!"

As she watched Dick rose shakily to his knees, reaching out towards her. Damn him! He was more concerned with preventing her roasting the man who had tried to kill him and kidnapped his son than he was with his own safety. She saw him pivot towards the hybrid-clone that was the sum of the two men who had hated Robin more than any other villain he had ever faced and shuddered as his hand just missed gripping the control device. As he fell to the ground, the finger descended and the Pretender howled in triumph.

And the world went into slow motion.

Dick winced and raised his hands to his head. Bruce raised to his side and fell to his knees, catching him and holding him in his arms. The Pretender spun to gaze at them and froze, and then its finger came down on the pad again and again and again.

Nothing happened.

Then it turned and looked her in the eye.

The tall Princess felt the power of a thousand suns running through her, boiling and

churning and seeking to escape. She glanced at Dick and saw him watching her horrified. His mouth was open and her name was on his lips. The black head shook from side to side.

Her gaze returned to the Pretender and she screamed and lifted her hands above her head and all the power and anger and rage that was within her exploded, showering the night sky like a firework display.

A moment later she walked over to the creature and stood looking down at it. It had fallen to the ground and was cowering near the marker which bore Jason's name. It looked up at her, raising its divided face and wide mismatched eyes. She lifted her fist and struck it with all of the strength and might her muscles contained and smiled as it toppled into the shallow depression like a broken rag-doll.

"Go back to Hell."

oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

EPILOGUE

"So you figured out how to neutralize the nannites after all?"

Clark was watching his son Bruce and little John. They were playing with Dick. The red-head's father had been pretending he was a villain and allowed them to catch him, but the tables had been turned and he had actually yelped outloud when the two tiny powerhouses wrestled him to the ground and pinned him there.

Bruce pursed his lips and shook his head. "Actually, no, I didn't. They are still in their blood."

"What?" The big man came out of his seat. "But Koriand'r said... How could you...?"

"Dare to let the Joker's clone push the button? Actually..." Bruce sipped some hot tea and relished the feel of it on his scratchy throat. He was going to have admit he was getting old and stop running around in the dark without a coat—or at the very least— thermal undergarments. "Actually, your wife had something to do with that."

"Me?" Diana laughed. It did her heart good to see her old friend looking so vital and alive. She glanced at the trio on the lawn and smiled as Dick sat up, holding the two boys, laughing so hard he was crying. "And just what did I do?"

He put the cup down and stood, soaking in the warm sunlight. "I had spoken with Koriand'r the night before, just after Dick disappeared for the second time. I told her I thought I had found a way—not to neutralize the bugs—but to block the signal that gave them their 'marching' orders. I had the transmitter set to cover the entire estate so John would be safe until I could figure out something else." He ran his hand along the back of his neck and pressed the skin to ease the chronic pain his metal braces caused. "Technically speaking, that meant _both_ he and Dick were safe so long as they were on Wayne lands."

"Technically speaking?" Clark accepted a soda from the Alfred-drone and shook his head. "That's a lot to wager on a technicality."

"It wasn't a wager," the man who had been the Batman said as he greeted his daughter-in-law. She smiled and kissed him on the cheek and watched as he went to rescue his son who had was under attack again.

Diana looked at her. "So what was it, if it wasn't a wager?"

Koriand'r laughed. Her bright green eyes lit and she beamed.

"A gift."

"A gift?" Clark asked as he stood and opened his arms to embrace his son.

"Yes. And an answer to prayer."

END


End file.
